


Machine Man

by nazu_gull



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Arguing, Frequent usage of alcohol, M/M, Mentions of Racism, Slow Burn, Violent tendencies, pro-Railroad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 22:50:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8596879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nazu_gull/pseuds/nazu_gull
Summary: Against his will, Pinocchio was turning into a real boy – with conscience, the baggage he desperately wished he could leave behind. As one learns how to become a man again, the other comes to terms with being a machine.





	1. The Great Pretender

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Welcome to an incredibly slow burn with Nate, my M!Sole, whose personality is very loosely based on Dexter Morgan 8D Me likey that TV show.  
> Warning: a substantial amount of arguing and graphic depictions of violence!

There he is. 

On the platform in the Green Monster, in a swank coat that looked almost exactly like Piper’s. Except his was black with battle scars in all the wrong places.

Diamond City – easily double its usual number – stands cheering before him with thunderous roars of ‘Whis-per! Whis-per!’. Because a celebrity really should have a press nickname. And ‘Nate’ just doesn’t cut it in a rallying chant.

He stands perfectly still, raises his right palm to the air and the crowd immediately falls silent like a perfectly trained puppy. 

“The Green Jewel!” he begins with a voice uncharacteristically deep that reached over the hundreds of tearful, staring eyes. “The time has finally come for justice to be served!”

Cheesiness doesn’t exist in this world, evidently. This version of Diamond City is perpetually perfect. It bows down to him.

He then spouts a bunch of word salad that seems to stir their hearts, to inspire them to devote themselves to him, the shadow-clad Hero of the Wasteland. The one who thrived against all odds. The speech doesn’t last long, around ten minutes or so. If he’d learned anything from the army it’s that the shorter your public addresses are the more memorable they become. 

Finally, drawing inspiration from Mayor Hancock, he ends the speech with collective cries from the malleable crowd. 

_Justice_.

“Justice!”

 _Vengeance_.

“Vengeance!”

His heart beats faster. And faster. And faster.

The city screams, for the love of their hero, for the blood of his enemy – so gloriously deafening. He raises both hands towards the sky, shutting his eyes, bathing his face under the brilliant light of —

 

“Maybe being on ice that long knocked a few of your marbles around? No offense.”

His eyes shot over to Deacon sitting on the other side of the bench. In his vision everything moved in a blurry trail, like he was in a dream.

Every single day felt a lot like a dream lately. Everything that didn’t take place on the battlefield had been dulled down to a droning at the back of his mind.

He cleared his throat and fumbled with a response, “That new coat of paint. Nice, huh?” 

It was Deacon’s turn to look at the Wall now, his lips in a tight line as he watched old man Abbot slathering on green paint with proud purpose as if he was the wall itself.

“Uh, sure. Looks just like that month-old mutfruit at Tom’s corner.” He turned back to the vault dweller. “Come on. There is a huge wall right there if I wanted to talk to myself.”

“Right,” Nate said. “So, well, uh, any perks being close to the big boss?” He mustered up a smile to appear invested in what he was saying, all the while thinking how Deacon seemed to be in fantastic shape for a 90-year-old geezer.

“Now that I don’t have to hide, sure. Tinker Tom will set you up.”

Deacon then set off on a rhetoric about the Railroad and he paid much closer attention this time. But apparently he needn’t have bothered anyway because right in the middle of it, the guy started to crack up and falter.

“I can’t keep up with this bullshit.”

“What?”

Deacon smirked, shook his head, an expression of pity spilled across his features. “Bull. Shit. Brahmin shit, whatever you wanna call it.”

So that had been another lie? This man had a strange hobby, there was no reason to beat around the bush by making up facts and then promptly taking them back. Was there a particular response he was crooning to see?

What a chore. Nate certainly didn’t know what else he was expected to spout so all he did was emulate a praise along with a chuckle.

“Well. Seems traveling with you is never dull.” It was clumsy. But better to be have been thought a fool than an unresponsive lump - it coerced people into letting their guards down. 

Even behind the sunglasses it was clear Deacon was giving him an odd squint.

“Damn. You’re one stony bastard, aren’t you?” Deacon stretched his arms out over the top of the bench, football gear clanking against the wooden bench in the midst of the empty assembly space.

This fellow was clearly one of the sharper tools in the shed.

 

They went their separate ways that evening. Deacon had an op organized by Desdemona and Nate wasn’t allowed to know more, courtesy of “strategic ignorance”. But all in all, despite the seemingly pointless lie, there actually was an unforeseen lesson in their little exchange under the dull morning sun.

“At the end of the day, you’ll need to make a choice. Make it the right one,” Deacon had said.

The right choice. He figured he’d cross that bridge later. Right and wrong had been flung out the window the moment she’d gotten shot in the vault. And out of everything it made something in him see this new devastated land as a playground flush with blood and power for the taking.

The post-apocalyptic world provides more than enough game. The silver lining to the shittiest three months he’d ever had the pleasure to live through.

 

He rode the broken road north under a crescent moon – imagining himself to be a pioneer walking the cold moon if only to make the damn five-hour trek less tedious – gliding along right up to the signpost of Sanctuary Hills.

Home, where the heart was. The first thing he did was pump a gallon bucket of icy water and drink straight from the dirtied rim like a parched wolf.

The chuffing of turrets wasn't the only murmur cutting through the frosty air tonight. Someone seemed to be banging something hard and metal onto something else hard and metal from inside one of the houses at the northwestern edge of the neighborhood. 

As he approached the house he could hear Preston inside, giving instructions of some sort. Strange that he wasn’t doing his usual midnight rounds.

Nate gave a few courtesy knocks on the front door that had been left ajar and stepped in, greeted by a whiff of propane and brazing rods. And there was Sturges – and Scribe Haylen of all people – standing over Preston and another brunet crouching among aluminium ducting and scattered power tools.

“Well, look what the molerat dragged in,” Sturges drawled.

“General,” Preston nodded in greeting and Haylen gave a small wave.

An odd group to be congregating here. Nate’s brows lifted. “Hey. What are you doing here, Haylen?”

But before she could answer, the brunet cut in. “We’ve been trying to radio in for days, initiate. Where in the world have you been?” he stood up from the tool pile and removed his welding gloves.

Paladin Danse. Oops. Nate immediately leaned off the wall and fixed his posture, “Oh. Sir. I didn’t realize you were...”

His pathetic sense of facial recognition didn’t help how the paladin was pretty much unrecognizable after having shed a hundred pounds of steel.

“You need to be checking that pip-boy more frequently. We – no, no, no, Garvey, the diameter needs to be far larger than that,” Danse bent down once more to eye Preston marking the curved surface of an old barrel with chalk.

“If it’s any bigger the hinges won't fit. I know what I’m doing,” Preston frowned, the rocking light from the ceiling catching a rare hint of annoyance in his face.

Haylen grimaced and made her way next to the vault dweller. “Paladin Danse wanted to…help with the barrel stove. Been at it since sun-down,” she told him under her breath.

Sturges graciously offered some expert advice and Preston waved him off, “It’s alright Sturges, get back to the Red Rocket. We got this.”

“That’s the thing. It don’t look like it from where I’m standing.”

Nate and Haylen exchanged glances. A horrendous clattering noise pierced through the night as Danse began to drive in nails down the side of the barrel, causing Cait to scream from next door.

“Can’t a girl get some sleep around here! Flippin’ stop that racket why don’t you, or I’ll jam that hammer straight up your arse in the mornin’, Preston!” 

Preston pointedly glared at Danse who somehow had the decency to stop hammering. And while the other two choked back laughter among themselves, Nate took this chance to excuse himself. Too many cooks in there already. And he wanted to go home.

 

He plopped to his ravaged house. Barely one step past the front door and Codsworth offered an overtly cheerful greeting. At least one thing hadn’t changed.

“Bit of a late night, Mister Nate. Some coffee? Or tea, perhaps?” 

“Coffee sounds great, Codsworth. Thanks,” he said with a smile. One he found he’d never had to fake around this robot that was delighted as always to serve.

In the master bedroom he settled his duffel bag down onto the carpet, gaze scanning the room.

Thanks to the gaping windows it wasn’t the most comfortable room anymore. There was a constant draft and it’d stopped smelling like her makeup. Her books and those pointless room ornaments they’d picked out together last month – no, it wasn’t last month – all stacked into a neat pile at the corner of the room. The camera was broken beyond repair. She’d nagged at him to get those photos developed too.

He stood before the dresser, still as a rock. There was the bottle of the perfume she had worn, less than a quarter left in a chiseled crystal phial, standing next to her favourite knitted cardigan pristinely folded up and laid upon the lacquered timber that his robot butler had spent days buffing to a shine.

His thumbs grazed the photo frame that was the apex of his impromptu shrine.

The baby boy in a tiny hospital-issue hat wrapped in hospital-issue blanket, held in her arms like he was a famous football or something. She looked so happy, even in the the dotted blue gown crumpled in the midst of postpartum fatigue. They hadn’t planned for the child but he’d been honestly keen to try his hand at parenthood because she was. He’d been happy because she was.

Her things hadn’t been touched. Good, it meant Codsworth was doing his job.

“Ah, good to see you again, paladin. Coffee for you too?”

The second he heard Codsworth saying that he wiped the dust off his fingers, strode out of the room, managing to catch Danse crudely rejecting the offer for a hot drink in the lounge.

Nate cut off access to the rest of the house on purpose by standing in at the entrance to the hallway. ‘Only family beyond this point’ if he could print a banner.

“You were saying right before, sir. Why you and Haylen decided to pay a visit?”

“This isn’t a social call, soldier,” Danse walked up to him. “And you didn’t respond to my question. Why haven’t you reported in?”

“I didn’t even know I was supposed to.”

That was a lie. He’d heard the call on AF95 last week when the dirigible descended on the Commonwealth but had decided instead to wait for a free spot in Nick’s schedule to have him along for Dr. Amari. During those fidgety few days he’d immersed himself in the intoxicating adrenaline of his victory over Kellogg, refusing anything that interrupted the thrill of the chase he’d been on a roll with.

“I was following a lead on...my boy,” he added for the effect. Danse’s expression softened at that. Good.

“And you neglected to drop by the station to give a three-second update?”

“I had a lot on my mind. Like I said, I didn’t realize.”

“That’s not good enough. The Brotherhood can’t have you losing your head every time you get distracted, especially not when the big ones are in town.”

Distraction? Sounded like a wrong thing to say about a parent searching for a missing child. Even Codsworth dropped a spoon onto the lino. Nate stayed silent, expression bleak.

It seemed the paladin realized his mistake the moment the words left his mouth. Danse shut his eyes and gave a sigh, “Just make sure you show up. Haylen and I leave in the morning, you should come with us.”

“I can’t tomorrow. Raider troubles in one of the settlements. Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Danse said as he turned to leave. “Day after then. The team and I will be waiting.”

And with that he walked out the house, leaving the vault dweller’s eyes fixed upon his back before the door was shut. Back in the army Nate wouldn’t have gotten away with any of that. Just how much of a joke was this Brotherhood of Steel?

He took a deep breath, hand still lingering on the handle when Codsworth came along with a mug of steaming black coffee.

“Bothersome bosses, sir. I may not empathize but I certainly do sympathize...” the robot emitted.

 


	2. Mack the Knife

He knelt among the shadow of the bushes, soggy soil seeping through damp fabric under his knees, fingertips pressed together against dry lips. His eyes flicked about the vicinity, plotting his course of action, glinting with something that felt like hunger.

It was a group of seven raiders at the Wildwood Cemetery, a small outfit for extorting a small settlement. At two hours past midnight he showed up at the perimeter of the graveyard, carrying out recon alone. With Deacon away he found he’d rather do the run by himself than with a partner unaccustomed to guerrilla tactics. Not to mention how he couldn’t do with anyone ruining the positively thrilling plan he’d cooked up.

He crept up to the single sentry posted outside, stood up behind him and slit his throat. All in one swift, practised routine so the man didn’t have time to make any noise other than a gurgle before spraying fresh blood all over the frozen ground. The turret was next – from behind its line of fire he sliced the wiring with his dripping blade, then stole to the largest mausoleum where the rest of the gang were sleeping. 

He peeped inside. Two of them sitting at a far corner playing poker for bottle caps, the others nestled into sleeping bags and rug beds among bags of food, meats and canisters of oil.

Amateurs, piling together in one room like that. It made his job too easy, especially when the stone walls were so damn thick.

He slipped out a frag grenade from its pouch, pulled the pin, tossed it in like he was throwing a baseball to a five-year-old and sprinted off.

“WHAT THE F-- !” 

The blast cut them short, bringing human flesh mixed with exploded tatoes and wreckage through the door opening far behind him.

He uncovered his ears, felt his heart tremor like the ground underneath, secretly savoring the sounds of those raiders screaming about their various limbs, never feeling more alive with adrenaline than when he satisfied that hunger for a kill.

It wasn’t prudent to assume they wouldn’t survive their injuries even though the room was catching fire. After the pained noises grew tedious to listen to he chucked another grenade in for good measure. Told himself he’d earned the spectacle as a reward for going out of his way to help those innocent farmers. When the screaming ceased after that second explosion he didn’t have to look into the mausoleum to know the job was properly done.

The joys of living in the wasteland, truly. No need for him to mop up the mess to hide what had been done to those people.

He picked up his bag, with someone else’s blood stained across his knuckles like black rain on picket fence, a weight lifted off his shoulders.

 

For the next set of hours he trekked towards Boston city, a single hooded figure stumbling over ditches and horned kangaroo bones, weaving through skeletal buildings and down to the police station in Cambridge.

That blimp must have meant serious business, what with all the extra troops stationed in the vicinity. It was past four in the morning when he’d gotten stopped by some of the new personnel at the outpost.

“Registration HS-189I. I’m with Gladius,” he waved two empty palms into the air when they’d aimed right at him.

The two soldiers glanced at each other and lowered their rifles. “Huh. So, you’re the newbie.”

“Go right ahead, brother,” the androgynous one said. “Breakfast is in an hour.”

He did as he was told and went right in. Brother? He felt like he was stepping into a church youth group of some sort.

The doors shut out the cold behind him and he stood alone in the lobby. The place was cleaner, much more equipped than the last time he’d been here. Though the dingy leather smell was now stronger than ever. It was quiet, the clock on the wall and the distant sound of snoring from the back offices the sole signs of life.

Peaceful. It reminded him of an old memory of the barracks at Edmonton back in his time. A couple hundred Canadian rebels chanting outside and it would be like nothing had changed.

He stepped lightly through to the sleeping quarters, doing an exemplary job of not emitting a creak from the wood under his shoes.

In the room adjacent to the lobby three beds out of four were taken up by the rest of his team – a head of ginger under a fleece blanket was Haylen curled up into a tight ball, at the end of her feet was Knight Rhys on his front with a faceful of pillow and beyond the cubicle divider was Danse, lying like a textbook soldier, flat on his back with sheets pulled up to his chest.

At the bed behind Haylen’s the vault dweller gently put his bag down and prepared for a nap. Gloves, shoes and hair tie off. Tommy Whispers’ pistol loaded and slid underneath the hard pillow.

As he took his coat off he heard the paladin stir in his bed. He looked over, found the man eyeing right back at him with a sluggish frown.

He’d been extraordinarily quiet, pretty impressive if Danse had woken up from all that.

“There you are,” Danse whispered, voice gruff from sleep. Or maybe lack thereof.

Nate didn’t move. He just returned the stare like a deer in headlights, deciding not to disturb the others by speaking but also somehow thinking he’d been mistaken for somebody else.

Danse shut his eyes once more and turned to his side, facing away from the room. “Full briefing in the morning, Initiate,” he mumbled.

 


	3. Bacon Fat

Nate proceeded to systematically reload his pistol seconds before the super mutant landed on the cold tile with an addled thud. That was the last one in Fort Strong, mission accomplished with flying colors, though he’d much rather have had the satisfaction of exterminating some dingy raiders instead.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this?” Deacon made a face as he stepped over a dead hound.

“I told you, there’s caps in it for you. Besides, orders are orders.”

“My. And I thought you were a full-grown man with a full-grown mind of your own.”

Nate’s brow twitched, something long-forgotten stirred within him.

What are the chances? His wife had once told him the exact same thing. Back when they used to bicker about the War and his contracted role in it, before the Anchorage tour turned him into someone else.

Before he could figure out a retort the heavy steps of power armor arrived within earshot, stomping down the stairs in the atrium outside and rattling loose plasterboards all around.

“Here comes big boss man,” Deacon muttered under his breath and deliberately began to act like he was searching the cluttered office for loot. 

Nate buttoned up his armored coat and flicked off some debris from his knees, out of the old habit of respect and appearing presentable before a commanding officer. When the paladin walked into the room he glanced up, eyes meeting with his.

“Outstanding work, knight,” Danse said with a tinge of surprise. Or was he impressed? Nate never found it easy to tell. “Look at this place, you must hate these mutants as much as I do.”

The vault dweller lifted a brow. Hadn’t realized he’d been expected to destroy them with prejudice in mind.

“And...that’s my cue. I’ll see you topside,” Deacon said. He stood up from behind the overturned desk with an unreadable expression and squeezed past the paladin who was clearly sizing him up with a once-over.

Nate cleared his throat. “Just following orders, sir. No more, no less.” 

“Well, it’s good to see you dealt with them the Brotherhood way. These monstrosities needed to be put down just as -- ”

Whether or not what Deacon had said got to him more than he’d thought, he wasn’t sure, but at this point he decided to interrupt. Being virtually newborn in this world, maybe Danse saw something in those mutants that he didn’t.

“Sir, if I may. They seem no different to me than anyone else, why the hate?”

He was eyed with stern disapproval as if he’d lost his senses. But he simply peered back, wanting to figure out if this leader deserved his respect.

“Hate,” Danse stepped forward, voice full of poison, “is too gentle a word. They are one of the abundant examples of mankind blindly taking a step forward only to wind up stumbling two steps back.”

“You realize it started from us, people like you or me. Who designed the FEV.”

The paladin stared him down, “Don’t compare us to the very slop of the old world that we’ve denounced, soldier. It’s ludicrous. And beneath you. You haven’t seen what they’re capable of. I’ve been fighting these creatures for years and just when I thought we were getting the upper hand, along came the synths.”

It was synths now. He began an eloquent discourse on the Synth Peril and Nate folded his arms, boots unwittingly grounded firmly.

Synthetic humans were now being compared to super mutants and apparently the chance of a second global catastrophe brought into the fold by robots with free-will was very much legitimate – all interspersed with other statements of beliefs spoken with contempt that seemed possibly equal to passion. A deadly combination.

Nate tried to channel his late wife. She was the one who debated for a living, after all. “It sounds to me like you’re confusing your hatred of the Institute with hatred for synths. There are synths outside the Institute’s oversight, you know. You’ve met Valentine.”

“I have,” Danse narrowed his eyes. “And the mere idea of that machine having been programmed to assume it has its own volition is utterly ridiculous.”

“...That _machine_ has been more willing than anyone to help me find my son.” 

The paladin wavered, hesitating for a bit. And then he let out a lengthy sigh, “I don’t mean to be brash. But you know now they’ve taken your child. The Institute. How sure are you the synth had no hand in this? With or without his being aware.”

Under Nate’s stony expression a blazing annoyance sparked to life. There should have been a counterstatement cooking up somewhere in his head, but all he did was stare at the man in the power armor. How he would even begin to argue against this sort of mentality and how in hell had nothing changed after two whole centuries was beyond him.

“This is what the Brotherhood’s all about?” He gave a short laugh at the absurdity, patience wearing thin against ignorance. “You all belong to the old world more than you might think.”

“How does that make sense?” Danse said, looking incredulous.

“Old Uncle Sam was more than ready to ship me off to some shithole camp ‘cause I look like a damned Red. And they would have if it weren’t for my Distinguished Service Cross.”

Blood, politics and fragile pride. Served them right that this was the world they got in the end. The room grew hot and his heart raced in growing anger.

Danse frowned, clearly taken aback at all this unexpected behavior. It was long moment before he replied, “The Chinese internment camps. They were to mitigate the escalating security risk. Though they were...a little incongruous.” 

“Hell, I didn’t do anything. Me and four million other Americans. I was ready to die to defend the people who turned their backs on me and that wasn’t enough?”

“I’m not saying they were wrong to trust you. With the growing threat from the enemy Com- “

“Alright – you know what, forget I said anything,” Nate slung his rifle over his shoulder and made to step past the other man. Dogmeat chasing his tail had more of a point than this discussion. “We’re done here. I’m done.”

“Do not shrug me off, soldier. That’s borderline insubordination.”

While mentally taking note of where the uncrossable line was with this Paladin Danse, he breathed in and straightened up, inwardly rolling his eyes. The power armor blocked the door and refused to move anyway.

He mustered a bold look up at Danse rooted a mere foot away. “Primary objective complete, sir. Will there be anything else?” 

He got glared at for a long while before the reluctant dismissal came, ordering him to cool off. And he stalked away. Up on ground level he reconvened with Deacon, for the first time enjoying the chatty company over a quieter, more polite soldier.

On the bright side, it took him a whole mile of a walk and a vertibird ride to the airship before he noticed the remnants of anger fluttering in him.

Anger meant caring. Caring meant he wasn’t as broken as he’d thought.

Maybe.

 

Clink. Clank. Clink.

The mooring line of the airship crooned as he stretched over the railing of the forecastle, staring idly at twilight-illuminated broken Boston with eyes stinging from the wind while the cold prickled fingers that held an empty beer bottle. 

In a ship of more than a hundred soldiers any space enough for seclusion would normally be a welcome refuge but for the first time since last October, indifference began to turn into dread. 

While some pseudo-psychological science might have termed it the healthy course for grief – he called it the anti-healing. The regression.

Things were simpler when he didn’t care. He didn’t have to evaluate his decisions based on a higher plane than survival itself. There wasn’t a nagging feeling in him about what he hoped wasn’t a mistake to fight for an outfit that wasn’t as helpful to the Commonwealth as much as they were hectoring them to fall in line with their strange doctrine.

He might as well have been an Assaultron, too used to following orders and fighting. Against his will, Pinocchio was turning into a real boy – with conscience, the baggage he desperately wished he could leave behind.

A trace of a public announcement heard from beyond the hull made him remember where he was, when he was.

He was meant to meet Deacon for Randolph in an hour. He hurled the beer bottle into the harbor – sustainability meant squat when there was no environment left – and went inside the Prydwen, teeth chattering from the chill.

He’d planned to step downstairs to collect his gear but as luck would have it, Paladin Danse was on the axial catwalk too, roughly ten yards away and marching towards him with an expression that painted nothing but purpose. Jeez.

They hadn’t met since Fort Strong the night prior. Nate had the urge to jump off the side of the catwalk onto the main deck, if only to get away without bumping into that sentient lump of steel. Maybe he’d land with a heavy thunk, impressing some squires and young initiates and leaving the paladin with wide eyes up above.

But he didn’t do anything at all. It was too late and too obvious to turn back and head out to the freezing forecastle, they’d already seen each other. So he went ahead and strode forwards, eyes on anywhere but the other man.

“Knight. They told me you were up here,” Danse broke the one-sided tension.

“Evening, sir,” Nate gave a civil nod.

When he tried to wedge past, an armored hand laid on his shoulder stopped him from moving farther. So he reluctantly reversed like a cargo-weighted brahmin caravan and stood in front of the paladin who spent the next few seconds silent, looking like he’d swallowed a bug.

“Look,” Danse said in a guarded tone, “I didn’t mean to insinuate the...inconsequentiality of your...personal struggles during our last encounter.”

Nate blinked. He’d expected a reprimand, a warning for administrative discharge or cruelly-reduced pay, something along those lines. Military sure was lax in the future.

“I’ve been taught to decisively view the world a certain way and sometimes that gets the better of me. Although, I think it’s safe to say we were both out of line,” Danse added. Probably had mentally prepared this speech beforehand.

“With all due respect, sir. I’ll stand by what I said. The Brotherhood as it is now doesn’t seem a right fit for me. As much as I’d like to remain I doubt it would be a prudent decision.”

“That’s an expected response from a new recruit. Sometimes I forget you’ve only been here just short of a month.”

“What I meant,” Nate shoved gloved hands into his pockets, “is that stewing in elitism isn’t going to fix the Commonwealth, despite what Maxson has you believing. Why don’t you ever question him?”

“You’re not going to live it down, I see,” the paladin’s brows knitted. There’s that righteous anger again. “This is war, Knight. You don’t win wars being charitable and idealistic. You root out the problems, review what needs to be done to achieve order and you do it.”

“We’re supposed to fight to protect everyone, simple as that. It’s every soldier’s tenet. Changing that whenever you see fit seems hypocritical. And irrational.”

Danse leered like he was about to bark back but surprisingly stopped himself. Like he was consciously trying not to let impatience get the better of him. He took a deep breath, pressed on his temple with a wrist.

“Rationality is relative,” he said word by word. “What’s sensible for me may not be so sensible for you or the next man, and I believe that’s the issue we’re having here.”

Nate kept his gaze absently hovering upon the power armor in front of him. An ivory winged blade on scratched gunmetal; the promise of power, dominance. Certainly easy to fall in love with how organized they were. Guns made things simple and god knows how much he liked simplicity. But even a hobbyist killer like him held the capacity to know they didn’t make things right.

“But,” Danse added, “I think we can reconcile our differences with time, Knight. The Brotherhood is more than what you think. It’s an ideal – one I hope you stick around long enough to be able to see more of because I can’t lose a soldier like you at a time like this.”

Acknowledged solely for his battle prowess. How fitting for an instrument of war like him. At least the readiness for dialogue made him realize that perhaps the CO was more reasonable that he’d thought. The man could have easily ruled on authority alone, refused a discussion and ordered him to zip it and sleep in the latrines for a month. 

A reasonable leader, though maybe with a heart in the wrong place. If it was only possible to surgically remove sections of that brain that contributed to that preposterous philosophy...

“I’d appreciate a response.” Danse looked a bit puzzled at him.

“Right, uh,” Nate began muttering, not realizing his cue had been up. “I, uh…”

At the back of his mind he wondered where that eyebrow scar on Danse’s face had come from. Bar fight, maybe? Maybe hand-to-hand training. He was blessed with good looks too. Him, Preston and Piper alike. Lucky bastards.

Nate cleared his throat, “I appreciate you coming to me to clear the air. May I go now? I have an appointment down on land.”

A tinge of disappointment flickered across Danse’s eyes before he gave a single nod and resumed a commanding tone. “Alright. Well, no, I mean – I came to let you know Elder Maxson has issued me permission to utilize my discretion in overseeing the assignments of the squad.

“That means more opportunities for me to be out in the field, and aside from Haylen and Rhys’ duties I’m able to thoroughly keep track of your progress as your sponsor.”

Nate reeled on the inside. Did this mean he had to limit the flourish of his little bloodbaths? “I can take care of myself, sir.”

“And it’s my job to make sure you do the way a member of the Brotherhood should,” Danse stood aside on the catwalk. “So, whenever you’re ready.”

“Right now? I work at night, isn’t this a little late for you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s not like I have a curfew to adhere to. We can finish whatever personal business you have first and make our way to Cambridge together.”

Nate scratched the back of his ear. Having a gun like him for this run may not be too bad an idea. He expected Deacon should be smart enough to assume discretion on topics concerning the smuggled synths.

“Alright, I’ll get my things,” Nate said. He held out an arm, motioning for the paladin to go on first.

But Danse gestured with his head, the miniscule smirk at the corner of his lips almost unnoticeable. “After you.”

The vault dweller retained an impassive face, issuing a virtually undetectable objection with his eyes before he stepped ahead, striding past the power armor at a measured pace.

 


	4. Delicado

He didn’t mind too much whenever he had to pair up with Marcy Long to calculate the budget for the settlements under the Minutemen, as long as he kept their conversations strictly around numbers.

That afternoon they worked on the floor of his living room at Sanctuary Hills with papers, calculators and a compartmentalized cookie tin of bottle caps sprawled all over the coffee table and rug. And in the middle of tallying how much budget to add towards Nordhagen, Deacon came in through the door, leaned over the couch and gave Nate’s shoulder two light taps.

“I need to borrow you for a minute.”

“We’re a little busy here,” Marcy snapped, not even bothering to look at him properly.

“Aw, but it’s kind of personal. Concerns a certain hairy, mole-like growth in a certain unmentionable zone?”

Nate frowned deeply. Marcy made a loud noise of disgust mixed with annoyance and waved them both away like she was shooing away chickens.

Outside the door Deacon cackled like a teenager, satisfied with her reaction. “Listen,” he began when they reached the middle of the road.

“Carrington’s got me doing a run for Dayton tomorrow afternoon. The usual stuff, hush-hush. Now, I know we’re scheduled to visit the Glowing Sea for that lead on Shaun. So...it’s up to you, can you wait another day for this? Or do you wanna have all the fun without me?”

“I can’t delay any longer. Not when the trail’s so hot,” Nate crossed his arms. 

“Well, there you have it. But it’s pretty much a hell hole down there, you got somebody else to go with you?”

Nate mentally scanned through anyone he knew who wanted to hunt down the Institute for one reason or another. “Shouldn’t be hard.”

“Great. I’ll lend them my hazmat suit, complete with RadAway and one puke bucket. Just...pick someone least likely to end up killing you both, alright?”

That was precisely what he intended to do. A toss-up between Danse and Valentine was no competition at all – as callous as it sounded Nick didn’t have a hundred and ten pounds of hardened steel and composite laminate to use as cover in a skirmish. And there was only one power armor up for grabs, which he would need for himself if the horror stories about down south were true.

 

By the time the accountings were done and their papers packed up the streets turned blue-grey with the sun far below the western hills. The vault dweller locked the house behind him, for the indication of privacy more than any form of deterrence it could offer, and walked down the street with his wife’s knitted scarf snug around his neck. 

Going to be a cold one tonight, the air was nippy with the smoky smell of frost. Someone was cooking something with onions at the house with the handmade barrel stove and Preston’s radio played _Night and Day_ from all the way down the lane.

Comfortable. As peaceful as post-nuclear suburbia could be. Until the next time someone decided to lay siege to them.

He wandered around searching for the paladin, did a whirlwind tour of each house and left its occupants bewildered at his abruptness. He eventually found him in the storage shed up the hill, sorting through boxes of scraps and supplies with a settler.

“That’s too heavy, you’re going to spill precious fuel everywhere. Where’s the dolly? I thought I told you to fetch it,” he heard Danse grumble at the ghoul-man who obediently left with a subdued slump in his shoulders.

Danse gave a nod in greeting when he saw him at the shed entrance. “I have no idea why Garvey lets in any of their kind in here.”

Nate, who had come to ask for help, now couldn’t seem to recall why at all. “You have a problem with ghouls too?”

“They’re time-bombs ticking down till the day they turn feral. If you ask me, they should be put out of their misery or at least moved somewhere they won’t pose a threat.”

And then, after three months of pure apathy, he didn’t know why or how something snapped in him. All he saw were the buses along Route 15 on their way to god-knows-where in the spread of the southwest, to where their lieutenant had called Little Yangtze. He’d felt everyone’s eyes on him for the rest of that day.

Red was all everyone had seen and red was all he would see now. 

His jaw tightened till his molars hurt. “Believe me. A real human is just as likely, if not more, to flip a switch and pull a gun on you.” He’d seen more than his share of it. In fact he sure was tempted to do the same right now. “So maybe we should start shipping everyone off to their own little island, huh?”

Danse glared at him as he got to his feet. “That is one of the most asinine arguments I have ever heard.”

“Right back at ya.”

“You think this is funny?”

“It’s ridiculous. If you want to hate then hate everyone proper.” 

That left Danse poleaxed. He stood speechless for a long moment, displeasure simmering out his entire form. “What is the matter with you? This keeps coming up, why are you so adamantly refusing to cooperate with the preservation of the human race?”

“I’ve got a damn problem with what you’re classifying as human or not. You don’t think it’s a little primitive to only see a smooth set of skin?” 

“The issue isn’t how they look as it is what they’re capable of with that sort of genetic construct. You’re pre-war, you of all people should understand how unnatural their existence have gotten.”

“Sir, human raiders do the same thing with all that looting and living in packs. Why haven’t we hunted them down and their blood relations too?”

“That is precisely the difference. They are humans, not irradiated husks or freaks of nature. You should stop comparing apples to oranges.”

Nate gave up. This conversation had to end. Needed to end, for both their sakes. “Christ. I don’t know why I came here,” he mumbled as he walked out the door.

“Hold it, Knight. I’m not done with you yet,” Danse raised his voice. “Your constant negligence of basic respect has been running my patience thin.”

Talking back was one of the worst mistakes as a soldier but nothing mattered as he turned a deaf ear and continued his bee line towards home. Out on the road a handful of the other settlers looked over, wondering what the heated conversation was about and most of all astonished at the vault dweller so clearly emoting for once.

“Last warning, soldier,” Danse yelled from behind him. “Or I might just make your overdue disciplinary measure the worst month of your life!”

“ _Do whatever the fuck you want_!” he shouted over his shoulder.

In his head he was already calculating how to get to the city to pick up Nick and still have time for sleep before setting off the next day. Danse’s growl of frustration melded into background noise as he stormed past Preston and Piper’s surprised little faces.

At home his chest heaved from a heart racing in blustering temper. The cans of purified water made a vicious noise that echoed off the kitchen walls every time his arm dove in the water crate and rummaged through, in search for a dozen travel-sized cans and purification tablets.

“Sir,” Codsworth wailed when one dropped onto the floor and created dents.

“I’ll pick that up myself.”

“No need for that,” Codsworth placed the can on the counter gently. “It’s...I would dearly like to see you calm down a bit. You’re putting my stress anticipators through quite the knackering.”

“I’ll be out of your hair in a second.”

“Oh, well hello, Mister Deacon. Fancy a cup of tea?”

“Another time, maybe. I’m just here for the boss today,” Deacon strolled in like he owned the place. “You mind giving us a sec?”

After the robot hovered out of the house and Deacon made sure he was out of mic-shot, he crouched down next to him and watched for a bit, like he was waiting for an angry child to calm down. “Hey, pal. Whatcha doing?”

Nate glowered at him and went back to the box. “What do you want.”

“The Goodneighbor powerball jackpot, for one,” he chuckled. 

There was no reaction from Nate, who stood up with a stack of cans in each hand and headed towards the bedroom. 

“Tough crowd,” Deacon bit his lip and trailed after him. As Nate entered the bedroom he made a point to stay outside at the end of the hallway. “Look, uh, I’m wondering if it’s a good idea to be pissing off your squad leader.”

“You saw that?” Nate stripped off into a clean shirt.

“I think everyone got a chunk of it on our way to the mess hall.”

“Nothing to worry about. He’s not going to be my CO for long. I won’t be going back. Do you know anyone looking to hire?”

Deacon let out a groan and leaned against the door frame. “Well, that’s the thing….”

“Listen,” he sighed, “I get how infuriating it can be when it’s just you against the whole Brotherhood of Assholes, I really do. They’re the selfish, narrow-minded, egotistical maniacs who think they can get away with anything in power armor and tunnel vision and – yeah well, you get the picture.

“My point is, storming out of the bastion with a finger in the air may not be the brightest way to fight the power.”

Nate paused in the middle of folding a pair of cargo pants, looking quizzical, “You’re saying we should walk back in guns blazing?”

“I’m saying, maybe tone down on the insubordination a tad? Play the field a while longer because it doesn’t hurt to know what’s going on in that side of town. Hell, it might save a few lives on our end.”

“You want me to spy on them,” he eyed Deacon surreptitiously for a while.

Those fellow soldiers, who would apparently shoot him out to space if he found out he was a synth or turned ghoul tomorrow despite all he’d done for them.

Maxson’s silly little tantrum he didn’t want to waste his energy on.

“That’s a fantastic idea,” Nate muttered.

“Mm, it’s pretty common in my line of work, actually.”

Nate glanced down at his bag. Maybe he should leave his stuff in there in case things didn’t pan out with Danse. A few minutes ago the courage he felt had been fueled by having had nothing to lose. Now he had to suck up?

Deacon read his mind. “Right,” he clapped his hands together feigning extra cheer. “Now for the hard part. Good luck duking it out with the angry golem. I’ll see you next week.”

And with that he sauntered off, leaving the vault dweller going over his plans by himself.

 

Nate spent the better half of the evening maintaining his guns and knives, trying to form an apology that spoke enough to the paladin to diminish any potential punishments while still being able to replenish any trust he’d squandered. Damn it, Nora would have been the perfect woman for this.

He waited till dinner at the mess hall was over, drank just enough scotch to put him in a better mood for grovelling and went down to the guest quarters well into the night when everyone had retired indoors. Preston’s radio was still playing, albeit on a much lower volume. Must have really liked music.

He straightened like a pole as he gave four solid knocks on the door to where the paladin couched for the night.

Bulky steps promptly walked up the other side before the chipped door opened in one full swing and there was Danse, in a washed out polypropylene shirt and sweats, his frame dimly lit by the railroad lanterns in the room behind him. His eyes narrowed.

“You. I suggest you choose your words carefully,” he said, frigid. Stern, not mad. Severe, but not downright demeaning. He’d definitely done this many times before.

Nate met his gaze firmly, trying to appear unreadable to gain the upper hand of the conversation. But the haze of the alcohol and his denied nervousness blended into something that made his mouth twitch out of nowhere and his body shake with quiet laughter.

It made Danse frown at him like he’d lost it. Must have drunk too much, too fast. When he looked up again the world bobbed gently like a boat.

“I haven’t been reprimanded by a superior since basic.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Danse said with a drop of amusement in his voice. 

Nate leaned in like he was telling a secret, “It’s true. I was a very different man back then.”

The silent street coerced each spoken word to be as muted as the radio from next door. Why was he here again? Oh, right. He shifted on his feet, cleared his throat. “I came to apologize.”

“For?”

You know exactly what for. “For swearing at you. And for deliberately disobeying orders more than once.”

“And?”

“And...for not agreeing with you?”

“For your information, I don’t humor brownnosing under my command. No, you undermined my authority and the entire Brotherhood ranks in front of the whole town.”

“Oh, yes, that,” he grimaced. His eyelids felt like lead as he blinked. “I, uh, shouldn’t have acted without consideration of my social surroundings. If I take issue with you, I should discuss it privately and will do so in the future.”

Danse scrutinized him for several moments like it hadn’t sounded genuine enough. “Good,” he finally said. “Five hundred push-ups and it’ll be off the book.”

A no-nonsense punishment as expected. He nodded. But maybe a bit too eagerly.

“A thousand, then,” Danse said.

“Sir, you just said – “

“A thousand push-ups, no breaks. You’re lucky I’m not putting you up for review.”

So this one wasn’t above gloating a little. Nate gave him an incredulous look. ‘Can’t I just go down on you?’ he had the urge to say. But that was the drunken euphoria talking.

“Can I do it after I’m back from the Glowing Sea?”

The paladin’s expression shifted. “You’re going tomorrow? I hope you’ve prepped your power armor.”

When he found out the vault dweller was potentially going to be a loner he insisted on going along and taking point. His feral extermination with Knight Rhys tomorrow night can be postponed.

Nate snatched up the offer, glad that he didn’t need to ask himself. Now he didn’t have to stop by Diamond City while hauling an arsenal down towards the epicenter.

“I’ll make sure you’re properly compensated.”

“No need for that,” Danse waved him off. “Any available intel on the Institute is payment enough.”

Even better.

Eight in the morning, they were to meet at the quad. Make sure to pack enough water, repair tools, and oil your power armor, he was told.

“Appreciate it, sir,” Nate drawled and turned on his heels. “I’ll get on with it, then.”

They said an awkward goodbye. Nate hinted about leaving but didn’t want to be the one who snubs his superior. Danse didn’t get it. When the door finally swung shut, the paladin had to have the final word.

“Do not load up on liquor next time you want to make an apology.”

 


	5. Maybe Baby

Roughly four hours into their journey and Nate was already starting to feel homesick for his usual travel buddy. Deacon may have been a sorry coward in battle at times but at least they had grown to work around each other comfortably and sat on the same wavelength.

They stopped for a break in a rotted-out halved cabin somewhere off Route 27. Lunch, water, a leak, whatever.

It was a dank day, the sun couldn’t splash down enough light for a warm afternoon. That chopped up snake of a highway, the crisped wall cladding surrounding the broken floor and derelict living room furniture – everything was evenly shaded under diffused light like they were in a news studio. Even the scars on Danse’s face didn’t seem so deep but the bags under those eyes were clearer than ever. Nate’s eyes dashed away the moment he’d been caught staring.

“I think we have the potential to be quite an effective team. If you learn to cooperate, that is,” Danse said to him.

And he was right. With his marksmanship and Danse’s frontal assaults they were pretty much unstoppable, if not for the poor affinity whenever they discussed more than the next course-of-actions or the weather.

Out of his power armor, Nate sat drenched in sweat on the edge of an exposed floor joist with a can of water and chunks of grilled rabbit. The paladin had removed his helmet and plopped down onto a rock sprinkled with ash-colored lichens, sipping not-sure-what from a steel canteen.

He told Danse to eat something, and then threw him a wrapped piece of mirelurk jerky over the six feet between where they’d perched. Never mind that it was the most expensive snack in his bag.

Compared to Deacon and Preston this man certainly had quite the appetite. After the jerky went as quickly as a dog could gobble up a chicken bone, Nate passed him a box of Fancy Lads on top of that.

“I expected a response, Knight.”

Nate stopped fiddling with the map on his pip-boy and swallowed his mouthful before he replied, automatically saying the feeling was mutual.

And that was it. A one, two, five-second pause until Danse broke the silence. “Is this really how you plan on building our rapport?”

Rapport? “We’ve...already proven to make an excellent combination in combat.”

“A soldier doesn’t exist solely on the battlefield, you should know that. I’ve seen more good than bad coming from solid camaraderie and if you want to be able to positively embrace the Brotherhood lifestyle, you need to learn the meaning of the word brotherhood itself.”

“But I’d rather not discuss anything other than our tasks, sir.”

“I don’t believe that, we seem to be doing a fine job last night. Just when I thought you’d squandered your potential you came along and made an outstanding effort of improvement.”

Boy, would he have bad news to announce if he’d decided to reveal his agenda. Nate kept quiet, glad that he couldn’t feel guilty over leading the man on because apparently his own Jiminy Cricket had taken the long sleep. Along with Nora.

Danse continued his lecture, he was good at that. “A good leader should recognize that a team is composed of several individuals – that’s several sets of skills, beliefs, attitudes. It logically leads to the occasional setbacks. It also means we don’t have to agree on everything.”

He kept going on about leadership and management. Nate’s eyes glazed over, staring into empty space as he naturally tuned out. Wonder what Preston and the others were doing now.

But Danse faltered, took a long breath, with furrowed brows to the ground.

“I’m...doing it again, aren’t I. Rambling on. I apologize.”

The clouds had split by now. Sun rays shone through to the ground and the vault dweller stared unblinking at the soil painted white and black with shadowy rocks and pebbles, till his vision turned pink and blue. 

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he muttered. And the sliver of guilt crept in at last.

Paladin Danse always had a lot to say, but not in the way that lying sacks that were politicians did. There was always a missable touch of desperation to influence, to show someone else the light he thought he saw. 

Some called that a form of passion, which may be spot on. But he called it a blinded faith in a certain airship fueled purely by ego.

Daylight over the rafters cast a long streak of shadow across Danse’s cheek as he neatly folded up the Fancy Lads packaging, ready for disposal. “We might have gotten off on the wrong foot. But despite our...verbal spars, I think we can learn a lot from each other. What do you say?”

Was this his method for boosting morale? Why so keen on forcing a mutual understanding? Nate yawned, watching Danse walk towards his helmet.

“Well, I think we should keep this simple. You order and I’ll follow, nothing more,” he said.

Danse turned to face him, jaw set. “You really think that’s the wisest thing to do?”

“You said it yourself, sir. We make one hell of a team. We shouldn’t waste this streak.”

They peered into one another. 

“Elder Maxson has always recommended otherwise.”

Elder Maxson was an idiot. “Well...he also recommends following orders without question.”

“Suit yourself,” Danse gave a skeptical shrug and flicked dust off his helmet before putting it on. “Maybe you’ll change your mind later.”

You don’t have to be friends with your colleagues to get the job done. It’d worked for him for years and this was no different. He swallowed the last of his water and chucked the can to a corner strewn with fungus, personally enjoying his recently-acquired litterbug habit.

The two spent the rest of their trek in professional silence, exchanging no more than several words, or when Danse assumed mentor mode to coach him on how to move the power armor in a more efficient manner. The bland but familiar territory.

 

Down south through the fringes of ground zero the erratic ticking of the geiger counter echoed away inside their suits and Nate eyed the status displays with mild alarm. He’d never seen the needle shiver at the edge before, without the armor he’d be puking a lake within minutes.

The phantom trail of the flare itself, the one he’d cowered under the day they descended into the vault. The wastelanders sure knew how to name their landmarks. In the heart of the Sea his chest pounded fiercely, breath hissing within the walls of his helmet over the booming wind slapping wild on the exterior. For a long humbling moment he forgot to breathe, forgot to blink.

The meaning of destruction and power, wrenched into the physical realm with a force he thought he could still feel with every mired step he took.

Magnificent.

The paladin scouted ahead under a smoky fire-gold blanket, his hazy form the only entity that stood vertical among bones of single-directional askewed trees that if could talk on that fateful day would have screamed, like everything else, run, run, run.

Ironically the world looked crystal clear from here. What with all the fractured earth, cancerous fissures and nests to the worst post-nuclear life could offer. Self-destruction, the definition of humankind at its peak.

“Ferals, two o’clock!” he could hear Danse’s canned voice through layers of steel, toxic air and steel.

The man’s fierce initiative was a welcome break. No sneaking past the long way around, no planning ambushes. Sometimes it was better to just bulldoze your way through and Danse did exactly that when he fired at the pack of feral ghouls milling around the glowing pond at least fifty yards away. 

Standard procedure – shock and awe while the vault dweller flanked and sniped them off with his tiny hand cannon of a pistol. Must have made for a comical sight wielding something that puny in a power armor but the enemies sure weren’t laughing.

But out of nowhere a deathclaw roared from beyond the highway ruins – storming through the giant irradiated puddle like knife slicing skin with a single objective in mind.

Danse was still caught up engaging with half a dozen drooling ferals, yelling condition red, as loud as he could over the ruckus of laser fire and wet snarls. But Nate had swung his rifle over way before he had noticed the creature.

No time for swapping in the AP shells or headshots. Crouching, Nate looked through the scope, held his breath as he lined up crosshairs with the belly of the beast and released the trigger. It would have to do. A Brotherhood paladin could surely handle a handful of muddled feral ghouls by himself.

He shot the deathclaw again, hit its hind scales instead. Sharpshooting in power armor was trickier than he’d thought but it somehow did the job. In a fit of rage the deathclaw shifted its attention and now rushed towards him on all four legs, and for the next three seconds he heard nothing but his quickened breaths and round after round of ferromagnetic slugs blasted at the creature’s face that lunged nearer and nearer.

Keep moving, he told himself. Aim, keep moving.

He took a quick glance over to Danse, who was now emptying his entire magazine into the deathclaw from twenty yards down the slope. Looking good. Except for the second giant lizard that was running over to join the hot zone. Jesus.

Cursing his luck, he sprinted off sideways as fast as the power armor could carry him as he fed more EM cartridges into the chamber. “Check six!” his long, strained shout sounded foreign even to him.

From this range a panting deathclaw sounded almost exactly like a rabid dog. A hell of a useless piece of information to register at a time like this.

The closer it got the more obvious the deadly, guttural growl in the undertones. As its saliva spattered across his visor he aimed for a point-blank shot – but before he released the trigger rock-hard ebony scales knocked the air out of his lungs as the crushing momentum of the giant lizard sent him skidding across muddy ground.

He opened his eyes when the world stopped flitting past and found half his visor caked in dirt.

He tried get up, but with a dead deathclaw crumpled over his chest it would take at least a few minutes of shimmying to slip out. Neither of them had ten seconds to spare.

The non-stop sound of fusion cells seemed to coming from somewhere nearby and at the back of it all he prayed to the universe that it wouldn’t go silent. God knows where his own guns were.

He scraped his visor clean with a single free hand, managed to catch the back of the paladin shooting at the oncoming beast with a battle cry.

The deathclaw barely slowed down despite its hind legs heavily scorched by laser. With another gruesome roar it began an even more vicious charge towards the two of them.

Damn this, not even half an hour into the Glowing Sea and they were already like this. This place sucked.

Run, he called out loud enough for Danse to hear. 

“What?!”

“Run and lead her here, I have a plan!” Two lines of shouting was enough for him to taste blood in his throat.

Then Danse swore. Danse never swore.

The ground tremored as he tore off behind the vault dweller who pulled a plasma grenade from the pouch off his waist piece, flipped the steel cap open and held down the ignition node, all the while keeping his sight solid on the deathclaw. 

If Danse’s armor could survive six thousand degrees and half a million pound-force of a rocket propulsion engine, a heavy-duty plasma explosive should be a piece of a cake. Should be.

Deathclaw minus two seconds would bring with it the moment of truth.

He rolled the little bomb out – saw his wife sleeping with ice powdered over her face and her blue suit – it struck a talon with a faint tap.

Please don’t be a dud —

 

Hell. The noise was beyond anything he could imagine.

 

Was that someone calling out his name?

Again. And again. As he regained consciousness.

Eyes open and there was Danse, under all that chrome.

The vault dweller unsteadily propped himself up on his elbows and for a second, thought he was dead. That he’d died and brought the whole glowing sea and the paladin along to hell or wherever. He turned to the man towering over him. 

“That wasn’t much of a plan,” Danse’s muffled voice came through.

Turned out he’d only been out for a couple of minutes. He got to his feet with some effort thanks to several regrettably-placed cuts and bruises from getting flung around like a ragdoll. Tasted iron on his tongue, couldn’t turn his neck more than seventy degrees to the left, sprained his knee, and the stickiness down his right ankle was very likely blood. 

“You alright?” he asked as he checked his fingers were still attached.

Danse scoffed, “I’m not the one who just fragged himself. Can you even see straight?”

“This arm’s a little stiff. Might’ve busted a line to the actuator or something.”

“We’ll get Proctor Ingram to take a look at it when we get back. Do you need a stim?”

“Maybe later.” He was thirsty too, but taking off his helmet to drink wasn’t a wise choice in an irradiated zone, on top of the dehydration side effect of RadAways. The power armor was brilliant but he was sick of all these downsides slowing him down.

They spent the next fifteen minutes recovering his equipment. His duffel bag, his coilgun. The hardest one was Tommy Whispers’ pistol. It was lying among a pile of scrap metal in between the knotted roots of a mangled tree when Danse found it.

“I still can’t believe we came out of that one alive,” he exclaimed when he passed the pistol over. “That was the alpha, you know. And in case you forgot, I said no heroics. What the hell were you thinking, diving right in like that?”

“It was instinct, something just clicked. We’re fine now, aren’t we?”

There was no response as they resumed their route with stiffer limbs and less ammunition.

“All’s well in improvisation but do not do that again. I’ve lost enough of my team as it is.”

 


	6. I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl

“Whisper, you’re a godsend,” High Rise gave a toothy grin as he took the beer carriers off both his hands.

Godsend. No, Drinking Buddy was the one churning out the cold ones. He’d merely decided to bring some over as a treat while Tinker Tom dealt with the signal interceptor at Mercer.

He had impeccable timing, Ticonderoga was busier than usual tonight, likely due to the sky pouring outside. There were easily a dozen additional agents milling around the house, plus the two synths they housed. The apartment was a hub with damp shoes squeaking on the floor, people laughing and chatting alongside the blaring radio playing _Thirty Days_ above the smell of twenty people’s worth of mac and cheese from the stove. 

“Looks like somebody poked the nest,” Deacon stepped out of the elevator, flinging his wet hands.

“Man, you have no idea. Seems like everyone nearby had the same idea of dropping in when the rain started. Became a sorta party in here now,” High Rise shrugged. “You two should stick around. Blow off some steam.”

“And boy, do we have steam to blow.”

Deacon and High Rise wandered off to distribute beer, leaving Nate dwelling around the lobby as he scrutinized the apartment. The kitchen half had most of the Railroaders mingling in loud packs while the half nearest to him was well deserted save for H2-22 flipping through a _Tesla Science_ on the couch.

“Hello, H2.” Nate claimed the empty chair nearby and lugged his coilgun onto his lap.

H2-22, too engrossed in the magazine, took a few seconds before he realized someone had greeted him. “Oh, Whisper. Hello,” he beamed in a shy schoolboy manner. “What are you doing?”

“Just...trying to diagnose this thing,” Nate mumbled as he shone a mini torchlight into the side of the Gauss rifle he’d spent six thousand caps on.

“Is it acting up?”

“Jams on me from time to time.” Almost costed him his life, once.

As he squinted into the copper circuitry he could feel H2-22’s eyes lingering on him, like he was hesitating to say something.

“Can I take a look? I-I won’t break it,” the synth finally spat out.

He passed the coilgun over. And much to his surprise H2-22 got off the couch and brought it upstairs with a vaguely distant look.

In the top floor they pondered over High Rise’s workbench where the gun was laid down. H2-22 inspected it with bright, keen eyes, prodding a bit at the wiring leading to the capacitors for a minute or so. Much to Nate’s alarm he then whipped out a small Phillips head and proceeded to remove the front portion of the barrel.

H2-22 looked into the cylinder and made a thoughtful noise. “The propulsion system is as good as new, so looks like it’s just a problem with the projectiles you’ve been using. See the scrapes down the side?”

“Huh,” Nate mused. Guess surplus ammo didn’t cut it, he’d have to fork out double for the premium cartridges now. The coilgun sure was costing him an arm and a leg and a kidney. “You’re pretty handy at this sort of thing. Much appreciated.”

H2-22 screwed on the barrel in its place with a sheepish look. “Y-You’re welcome.”

A hissing came from the window as a violent sheet of rain lashed against the glass and the synth’s gaze came to be glued to it like he was watching fireworks. He leaned forward, as if trying memorizing the trails of water with awe gleaming in his eyes. 

Nate followed his line of sight to see what the fuss was about but all he saw was a grey and murky city sprawled below. “Haven’t you seen rain before?”

H2-22 shook his head and tore away from the window. “It never rained where I came from. It looks like a giant shower. I wonder what it’d be like to stand under.”

Nate contemplated the wry simper on H2-22. “Why not go now before it eases up?”

“Oh no, no. I can’t go out, it’s too dangerous.”

“I’ll go with you. Come on.”

Soon enough they got permission from High Rise downstairs who said okay as long as they took Deacon along. And on the way down in the elevator the synth wrung his hands back and forth in excitement and a tinge of fear.

“So who thought it would be fun to catch pneumonia?” Deacon whinged, arms folded and shimmying in place from the cold.

Nate popped up his coat collar and checked his guns. “It’ll be fine, relax.”

“Says the guy who’s been a wastelander for four months, tops.”

 

Outside, they stepped to the edge of the lobby while Deacon sat on the reception desk among the shadows, legs dangling off the front. 

Where the rain ceased and the edge of the shade began H2-22 held his palms out to the deluge, head darting about in every direction with shining eyes and mouth stuck in a permanent smile.

Nate stood beside him, watching over his every move in a mild daze. His mind flitted back to the first time he’d played with snow, just outside Texas with his grandparents around twenty years back. No, wait, that was two hundred and thirty years ago, before humanity tarnished his innocence.

“Everything smells so different when it rains,” H2-22 cooed.

“Go on. Step in.” Nate gave a smile.

After removing his jacket H2-22 extended an arm out, and then a shaky leg, drenching himself limb by limb until finally moving completely out of shade. He let out a rich laugh, lifting his wet face to the dark, cloudy sky and trying to keep his eyes open under fat falling drops of water.

“Keep your mouth sealed. Wouldn’t wanna burn your tongue from acid rain,” Deacon called out from behind.

It caused H2-22 to shoot him an alarmed glance but Nate appended, “You’re not drinking gallons of it, it’s alright.”

He politely declined when the synth invited him to join. They’d already gotten their fair share of a soak on the way here.

As he watched H2-22 crouch by a puddle to observe ripples, his thoughts unwittingly zipped over to a certain paladin. It must have been pouring where he was too. And the guy was probably sticking himself under a roof of some sort, grumbling about rust.

 

H2-22 wiped his face with a sleeve when he stepped into Ticon after the trip. Dripping wet, leaving a small pool of water wherever he stood and drawing the astonished looks of some of the other agents. His jaw must have been feeling so sore from all that non-stop grinning.

“That was fun! Really fun. Thanks, Whisper. And Mister Deacon too.”

“Make sure you take a hot shower or something, little guy.” Deacon headed off to the kitchen in search for more beer.

There was a slight shiver in his hand as H2-22 rubbed his nose, but he never looked more alive. Strangely enough walking in the rain looked to have made everything he was eating appear to be the tastiest he’d ever had and he watched the crowd with technicolor in his eyes, listened to the cloying radio chatter with a brighter smile as Nate watched him from the couch, unmoving.

From where he sat it was certainly difficult to know just who was the machine and who wasn’t.

 


	7. Ain't Misbehavin'

Deacon thought the artist behind the scarlet-dipped paintings was ‘bat-shit crazy’. He, on the other hand, as with all art, saw only bizarre brushstrokes and splatters with an underlying meaning that escaped him.

At the end of it the methodology was the only element he’d found exquisitely poetic, though judging from Deacon and the raiders’ reactions, it typically wasn’t supposed to be. That was an alarming amount of blood, from more than a couple of full-grown humans at least. Maybe red paint was hard to come by in the wastes.

The flutter of excitement in his gut when he saw the artist in person was difficult to tame, so much so it made his companion pass him a strange look from under those sunglasses.

He was about to meet a long-lost partner in trade. Someone in this same line of...idea.

They introduced themselves, shook hands in one of the most well-mannered exchanges he’d ever encountered in the wasteland. ‘Tell me about your favourite piece,’ he wanted to ask. But with Deacon nearby that sort of talk wasn't the most tasteful.

“See you around, killer,” Pickman’s honeyed words reverberated off the cavern walls as they were about to leave. 

“See ya. Stay out of trouble,” he muttered over his shoulder with a hint of playfulness that hadn’t gone unnoticed by his strangely quiet partner.

Up top, he’d barely swung the trap door shut when Deacon decided to air his opinion. “‘Stay out of trouble’? Seriously?”

That tone was a new one. It was flat, humorless, made Nate give him a second look in defense mode as he spun Pickman’s key around his finger. So the perpetual liar only ever spoke the truth when he did or said something inappropriate, fascinating. He filed that away for future reference.

“Do me a favor,” Deacon let out a stiff sigh, “and leave me off the invite list when you two throw your annual psycho society reunions.”

He plopped up the stairs and left the vault dweller among the rubble of the floor below.

Nate chewed the inside of his cheek and followed without a word, listening to the vile creaks of rotting wood with every step.

 

He didn’t get it. What was so bad about enjoying a bit of carnage on deserving parties? Whether he liked it or not there were people in this world who didn’t deserve to live because they’d tipped the equation too much out of their favor. 

If you don’t take out the trash they’d just pile up and stink, this was just natural selection. Hancock would certainly agree on this.

 

Fortunately, his partner wasn’t nearly as brilliant as him at holding grudges. Deacon wasn’t the kind to stew in anger – within a quarter of an hour into their visit to the Old North crypts, he stalked into the warren leading to the escape route and placed a half-full bottle of bourbon (half-empty by his standards) in front of where Nate sat on an old mattress at the end of the tunnel.

“Courtesy of Desdemona,” Deacon grinned and settled on the floor, against the crumbling brick wall. “A drink to your first triumphant run. Something we do around here.”

What a practical tradition. Nate turned off Atomic Command and took one of the glass tumblers offered. “I guess H2 is out of the Commonwealth?”

“Yup. Report came in today.”

Pouring that liquor sounded as beautiful as a bubbling brook on a scorching day. He swirled the drink, picking up notes of vanilla and old hay and smarting vapor, and was about to seize a gulp when Deacon motioned for a toast.

“To freedom. And bourbon. But more so on the bourbon thing.”

He gave a small smile to Deacon’s anticipation and held out his glass, deep amber caustics dancing over their fingers under the buzzing lamps. With a soft clink they each took a big sip.

The fire down his throat felt glorious. It’d been a while. He should do this more often, getting his mind to rest without murdering anything. Something needed to feel alive in him after all, why not burning whiskey.

Deacon’s cough echoed through the tunnel. “That’s some good shit,” he sucked in air through his teeth.

Nate crossed his legs, sitting hunched over his folded legs and nursing his drink.

“You know he asked me if you were a synth?” Deacon shook with laughter.

“Who?”

“The package, H2. He asked and I told him, ‘Yup. Whisper’s a Gen. 1, just got outta reconstruction surgery last week!’”

“He actually believed that? Tell me you didn’t leave without giving him the truth.”

“Well, does it even matter now?”

Nate traced a cold finger around the rim of the glass in silence. Shame that he’d decided for a mind wipe. H2-22 was a good one.

The vault dweller cast him a sidelong glimpse while taking another swig. Lie or not, it never really mattered but all that questioning every second word that came out of his mouth was what made conversing with Deacon a chore. Unless, of course, the guy was much too pissed off or in pain to maintain his filter. Not that he should get any ideas.

“So, hey. We hardly talk anymore, pal. Tell me what is going on in there,” Deacon clumsily gestured towards his chest. When Nate’s brows drew together in suspicion he added, “It’s called chatting, it’s what friends do. At least back in my day.”

Nate thought they were colleagues. What’s with the third degree? Maybe that pair of sunglasses was finally catching on to how strange he was under his slipping mask of blandness.

He began to turn the conversation around. “I’m fine. A little nervous about the signal interceptor, though. We have no idea what’s on the other side or if it would even work.”

“Don’t worry, Tinker Tom’s devices usually work.” Deacon adjusted his sunglasses for effect. “If not, uh, can I have your stuff?”

“For the record, my things go to Codsworth when I die.”

“What about your boots? He’s got no use for those and I’m totally digging them. You can have my shades.”

Nate scoffed. “Maybe your wig instead.”

The pointless banter. Small talk. At least it pointed the spotlight on anywhere but him.

They spent the next few drinks exchanging some words he’d let the bourbon coax out of him while the rest of headquarters slowly came alive with the day-shift agents waking up. Alarm clocks rang, silverware clinked and clanked over the smell of brewing coffee and there they were throwing back some shots as the sun rose outside. It’s 8 a.m. somewhere.

Deacon talked about his trip to the Mojave five years back. The longest trek of his life as he’d hitchhiked with a caravan outfit across the desert towards the Boneyard.

“Bone yard?” Nate asked.

“That’s Angels. Lost Angels. Bleugh.” Deacon shook some drunkenness off his brain, “Los Angeles, to you. Did I get it right?”

So L.A. was still operational. Might be a good way to spend the rest of his life in the wasteland. Sightseeing, amusing himself with the before and after. “Wonder if Nora’s old apartment is still standing.”

The pause before Deacon replied somehow sounded way longer than it actually was. “I wouldn’t count on it. But hey, you never know. Chem fiends might've decided to...shack up there and play heritage conservatives?”

Nate tipped back the last drop of bourbon, observing Deacon lazily rubbing his eyes and flicking away gunk.

“May I ask you something?”

“No, you may not,” Deacon gave a mock look of indignance.

“Do you think Barbara would be proud of your work with the Railroad?”

The pair of shades stayed aimed at the bourbon bottle and not to him. A few silent seconds tolled by until Deacon shifted in place, cleared his throat delicately.

“Don’t know. I’d sure like to think she would. I mean, there’s a lot to be said about fighting a losing battle only because it sits right by you, right?”

There it was again - the irrationality. Just like with Danse. Only this time it stemmed from an unwavering conviction in a set of ethics the majority of the world didn't seem willing to acknowledge.

The yin to that yang. The Brotherhood wanted to obliterate everything, the Railroad preached total tolerance and the Minutemen wanted to stay out of it all. A messy soup of warring ideologies. Good old America.

“Then again,” Deacon cracked his neck and smirked, “maybe it’s just whiskey rotting the old brain.”

Equality and freedom for everyone. Didn’t sound like such a pipe dream. It shouldn’t, in fact. Deacon and the Railroad seemed to believe that too.

Nate slumped into the mattress, staring at the rocky roof. “I get it now,” he whispered.

“Hm? What did you say?”

Glory stomped through the arch out of nowhere, looking for her jacket. “Oh geez.” With a single glance she managed to channel overflowing sarcasm as she rummaged through the rusty shelves. “Am I interrupting something here? Maybe you two should get a room.”

Deacon guffawed and sat up in a clumsy effort. “Yeah. He wishes.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Hancock dislikes it if you spare Pickman xD


	8. Sh-Boom

The world spun at a fragment of its usual pace the moment the rolling grenade stopped right next to their cover.

Deacon hadn’t finished swearing when Nate pounced on it and hurled it back to the raiders – but it still detonated with a deafening boom less than thirty feet into its arc, sending the pair skidding across chipped tiles among a wreckage of file cabinets and pre-war office supplies.

There was a ceasefire from both sides of the skirmish as the satellite station lobby stood dead still.

Shaking, Nate picked himself up. He’d ducked to the floor as low as possible when the grenade left his palm and it earned him a long slash across the hand that shielded his head. He winced from his bruised head – couldn’t even hear his own growl over the screeching in his ears – and got onto his knees after picking up his handgun. 

Deacon wasn’t too far from him, struggling to get up as well with a litany of ‘Owh, sonofabitch, owh.’

Nate slid over on scraped knees to check on his partner’s wounds. Shallow cuts and a large abrasion on the forearm. A picnic compared to what could have been. He wrapped an arm around his chest and dragged him to the steel upturned desk that had been partly responsible for saving their lives. 

“Get up,” he muttered after callously dropping Deacon down with a thud.

The screech in his ears became a dull ringing. The raiders were still scuttering about, he could hear them yelling at each other, resuming positions beyond the hallways leading downstairs.

“Get up, Deacon.”

Deacon still had trouble sitting up, from shock more than anything else. “That’s cold,” his breath rasped at his throat. 

But Nate wasn’t paying attention. He’d crouched behind the corner of the desk, eyes and ears open, staying still except for his stifled panting. The remaining enemies had been peeking in and out of the corridor but were strangely silent at the moment, like they were planning something. Not a good sign. And there was no one he could snipe off from there.

As much as he hated losing, it was time for a retreat. Their positions had been compromised and they were just a pair of sitting ducks.

“We need to go. Now,” he whispered.

“No complaints here, boss.”

With a firm hand on Deacon’s shoulder he made him take point, made him get out the front door first as he covered their flank. They were quiet, at least. No one followed. Probably thought the two intruders were hiding in the lobby still.

Outside the station they didn’t stop jogging through the shadowed trees until they got to the bottom of the hill, panting over their knees with their rifles slung across their backs, unused.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” Deacon tittered, weak and freaked out.

“You can’t win all of them,” Nate might have said, but he still felt somewhat annoyed at himself for losing to a bunch of riff raffs. Granted, he hadn’t been given a chance for executing the usual element of surprise, but he thought he was a better fighter than that when it came to brute force. Power armor might have given him a different story.

 

They staggered their way back to Sanctuary Hills, with pain throbbing sharper and harder the closer they approached the town. Machine gun turrets were the only things that moved in town tonight. Everyone was asleep. Preston was at the castle and MacCready, who had been paid for sentry duty, was nowhere to be found. 

Deacon sat over the edge of the garage with his right arm bleeding down to his wrist, averting his gaze from all the blood for as long as he could while Nate left to get Curie. But when a cold drop of something fell onto his pants he felt a feeble shiver up his spine.

“That’s my blood, ooh, that’s my blood,” he blinked up at the stars, begrudgingly feeling like he’d been more prone to bleeding injuries since a certain vault dweller came into the picture.

Nate returned, striding over with MacCready and Curie who held an industrial-sized first aid kit in one of her arms. 

“Curie…” Deacon droned with a lilt, “are you a sight for sore eyes. With your little kit too, how adorable.”

“Stay calm, Monsieur Deacon. I’ll get you fixed up straightaway.”

“‘Tis naught but a s-scratch - oh, Jesus.” When he tried to wave his arm the loose bits of flesh dangling around shaved skin evoked a chorus of groans from everyone.

“Dude!” MacCready blurted.

“Monsieur Deacon, I must insist you stop moving!” Curie set down her medical kit on the porch floor and acquired her needed tools systematically. Nate crouched over her tools when she left, finding hydrogen peroxide to treat himself.

Next to him, Deacon sounded like he was drunk as he struck up conversation to distract himself. “So where have you been, MacCready?”

“Taking a leak. Why’s everyone asking me that?”

“Well, the town ain't gonna patrol round itself. Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?”

“Nah, I think I’ll stay for a while. It’s kinda fun to watch when it’s not me at the end of those tweezers.”

Nate stood a few steps away from the trio and sprayed his gash clean, not caring very much that it wasn’t doctor-recommended. It bubbled over, his jaw tightened and he silently cursed the growing anger that was his reflex in the face of pain. He returned the bottle of peroxide, tore a compress out of its packet and applied pressure to the wound as he walked over to check on Deacon.

“Doing okay?” he faced one of Curie’s visual sensors.

“Yes, I expect a full recovery. The graze is shallow, so there is no need for stitches. A simple enough task.”

“No stitches,” Deacon parroted and fist bumped MacCready. “And boss, settle down, will you? The doctor will be with you in a minute.”

Curie emitted a gasp and one of her eyes zoomed up to the compress on his cut. “You are injured too? Oh, please be patient, I won’t be long.”

“It’s alright, I’ve dealt with worse. Just take care of this one for now.”

He walked away before any more protests came as MacCready quipped to Deacon, “Aw, isn’t that nice. You’ve got mommy and daddy worrying after you.”

“It warms me to my core.”

 

In search for a spare rag to tie around his palm he wandered over to the mess hall. The house was pitch black with its front door gaping open to invite hungry wild animals in. MacCready’s fault, he guessed, when the boy had gotten snackish or whatever and then forgot to shut it behind him when he left.

But he didn’t get three steps past the door when he saw the more plausible culprit sitting at the nearest chair facing the door.

In the dark Danse had his head burrowed within folded arms upon the trestle table, with half a shot of liquor of some sort sitting next to that raven head of hair.

He was breathing loudly and steadily through his nose. Sleeping, looking like some sort of giant panda in Brotherhood-issued bomber jacket.

Nate stomped right past him and he didn’t even stir. This area wasn’t meant for sleeping, ergo disturbing a napping man wasn’t a relevant factor at all. The kitchen cupboards swung open and shut with a loud squeak until he found an old cheese cloth for his wound. After haphazardly tying the compress in place, he scoured over the neat arrangement of tidbits in the floor-to-ceiling pantry and acquired a pear and a can of baked beans.

He had supper, his wounds were cleaned and it was time for bed. But as he made to exit he stopped at the rubber mat before the door and turned to survey the man at the table.

Should he wake him? He didn’t even have a coat draped over. Though really, it shouldn’t be any of his business where he decided to take a nap at three hours past midnight. 

Nate turned to face the outside, still not moving.

Go on, get out of the house, his head told him. It shouldn’t even be any of his business if the paladin keeled over from a cold or hypothermia tomorrow. One less Brotherhood fruitcake. 

He turned to look at him again.

Damn this.

Without really understanding why, he tiptoed over and whispered, “Paladin Danse.”

It was all it took for Danse to open his eyes. He sat up, seemingly as alert as he’d been before dozing off, taking a few moments to recognize the expressionless face staring down at him. “Knight”, he muttered. Now he was peering into his drink with a frown.

“Was there another radroach under the guest bed?” Nate asked in earnest.

“What? No. I had a bit of trouble sleeping, is all.”

Walk away now, his head said. But he said, “Why?”

“There’s no need for you to concern yourself with my private issues, Knight. In case you forgot, you have the recovery operation at noon tomorrow. You should be resting up.”

He was right, of course. But Nate didn’t move, just blinked at him once, twice, gaze flicking down to the floor and back up to where the light of the street lanterns danced upon the face half-dipped in shadows. To him he must have just been one pure black outline from there.

Leave right now, the voice said. 

He placed his wrapped palm on the top of the chair opposite, and rusted steel brushed on dusty concrete with a soft scrape as he pulled it out. With a hesitant effort he placed his supper on the table like he was handling primary explosives and sat down with their knees inches away.

They sat with their backs slumped against mismatched chairs, submerged in darkness.

Maybe it was the faint light from the lane, or the ever so slight arc in those bushy brows. But the paladin looked like he’d grown incredibly tired of thinking when he traced fingers across his creased forehead, kneading his temples.

“Why can’t you sleep, sir? Tell me what's wrong.”

 


	9. Seems Like Old Times

Fantasy was fun, fantasy was refreshing. He’d take it over reality any day.

That afternoon he was a cage fighter starring in the Combat Zone, training for a thousand spectator fight with sets and sets of pushups and weighted pull-ups at his front door.

So with each haul that burned his back, his biceps, with each exhalation of labored breath he relished an illusory cheer from the crowd in his head that encouraged his next rep – all in magnificent timing with Chopin’s ballade playing from the transistor radio on the three-legged end table.

He squeezed his eyes shut, relishing his racing heart and the sweat dripping off his forehead. This was zen mode. This was perfect.

At least it was, up till Deacon walked by with a travel-sized copy of _Frankenstein_. “Cloudy with a shower of testosterone,” the guy garbled through the cigarette between his lips.

Nate hung still by his grip on the telescopic bar, eyes on the peeled ceiling. Lost his count now, along with that wonderful spark that came from shoving his mind somewhere more interesting. He huffed and let go, landing on the balls of his feet in a light thump and light annoyance.

“Forget about that shite. All you need is a punchin’ bag and a photograph of your worst enemy,” Cait chimed in from across the street as Deacon joined her under the verandah.

This was as good a time as any. “Speaking of,” he said as he crossed over to the two. “You wanna spar some time? I could use the practice.”

“Fisticuffs? With you? At least buy me a drink first.”

“Aw, I thought we had something special, Cait,” Deacon teased even with his nose buried in his book.

“I mean getting stinkin’ high before a fight, it’s how I’ve always done it.”

“How about I get you that drink after our first round?” Nate splashed on his best grin, as if that would convince her.

“What d’ya got? No more of that watered down rubbish. That shite was less trippin’ out and more trippin’ to the jax.”

“Cheap scotch? That’s all I got.”

Cait rested a hand on her hip, fingers tapping against her leather belt. “Good enough, I guess. When do you want to start?”

“You free right now?”

“Anytime. They’re your bruises.”

Next thing he knew, there they were, stretching their arms and thighs on the concrete slab foundation of old Able’s house that Preston and him had spent days screeding in the beginning. Mama Murphy had kicked Deacon out of her chair so that joker brought over an old cardboard box to act as a spectator to cheap amusements.

Nate settled into stance. Left foot forwards, toe aligned to back heel, arms up. Theoretically steady.

“Okay. Don’t hold back.”

“Was gonna say the same thing.” Cait hopped a little, copper hair luminous under the fervent sun. 

“Ready?”

“Ro-ound one! Begi-innn!” Deacon had rolled up his novel into a cone and bellowed into it like a UFC host on a budget.

Nate narrowed his eyes at his strange interest in all this. But it turned out to be a big mistake – he didn’t see Cait’s fist flying right up to his turned cheek and then – bam.

Ouch. Barely one second in and he’d already earned a discoloration on his face. Deacon winced along with him as he stumbled sideways like he’d just been pushed by a horse.

“Eyes open, you numbskull!” Cait chided.

He didn’t bide his time shaking off the pain and instead launched in for an attack to her center, one that would have knocked the air out of her should they have been fighting for real, since she hadn’t blocked in time. After the first fake punch she skipped backwards, chuckling in smugness.

He assumed his basic strategy of an unflinching offense – he hurled a short burst of punches to her throat, she thwarted them with some effort, and before she could even think about retaliating he aimed for her face.

She scoffed and deflected him with her forearm – that he caught to pull her in for a takedown – till she ran a quick side-step to mitigate – and once again they stood five feet away from one another, keeping light on their feet.

“Feisty one, aren’t you,” she breathed, wiping the first drop of sweat off her forehead.

Nate unzipped his hoodie and threw it somewhere over the side of the raised slab, leaving on a drenched cotton undershirt. He resumed his posture, wedding bands around his neck glinting before his relaxed fists and reflected in his crystal clear eyes.

“There it is,” she hummed with a touch of flirtation he might have secretly enjoyed if he wasn’t so focused on fighting the gal.

He swallowed, breathing steadily through his lips and keeping a concentrated gaze fastened onto hers. With one foot forwards another elsewhere in the rink would retreat, in a visceral sort of quid pro quo destined to be toppled by the victor. More punches, more backhands, more kicks, and then there were knees to stomachs, to the groin – boy, did she give the purest smirk when he blocked that one. Barely.

When her arm ended up in a joint lock at some point she elbowed the inside of his arm and administered a counterattack that he yet again avoided within half a second. He’d gotten rusty. Or maybe she was just that good. Her moves were haphazard but without a doubt practical and effective.

They were so engrossed with each other the small crowd gathered around the rink might as well have been the flattened backdrop to their strange dance.

“Mon Dieu, somebody should stop them!” He heard Curie’s gasp over all the panting and fabric rustling with every move, every step.

“It’s alright, they’re just practising,” Preston said, just after one of MacCready’s gleeful chuckle.

“Watch your stance, Knight.”

After twenty exhausting minutes of push and pull and going nowhere with either winning or losing, the two of them reluctantly called for a recess.

“You’re really good at this, Cait,” he simply stated as they walked towards the edge.

It was true. He had easily a decade’s worth of close quarters combat training to flaunt yet she’d repelled almost every blow he gave. Not to mention she was ten times more nimble.

“All part of the job,” she breathed, checking her bruises. He fancied he heard an underlying spot of sorrow, until she looked up and snapped at the dozen or so spectators who began to disperse from around the quad as they stepped off.

“What’s all this? You people are nosier than a pack of two-headed molerats!”

The dull clapping of gloved hands came with a Preston in boyish excitement. “Damn, that was pretty cool! You two really are something!”

“Right? I have to admit, I was kept on the edge of my seat. Box. Thing,” Deacon pursed his lips.

“Been a while since a workout like that.” Cait rain a hand through unfettered hair and shook it loose. “Now if you’d only show up on this side of Boston more often, we could make it somethin’ to look forward to everyday.”

“Well, it’s not like you’re short on partners to pick from around here,” said Deacon.

Preston folded his arms and looked like he was keeping a lid on his enthusiasm. “That’s right. It won’t do any good to be rusty, why not spar with me next time?”

“That won’t be a fight, handsome, that’ll just be me slappin’ you silly. Though you know, I won’t complain if you’re into that sort of thing,” she winked, and Preston’s mouth set in a hard line, his forehead creased over.

Beginning to feel crowded on, Nate left the conversation in search of clean water to drink. With the sun down his back it was unusually warm for an afternoon in Bostonian March. So much so on the way to the hand pump outside his home he peeled off his sour undershirt, filled up an empty milk bottle and gulped it down like it was life.

With a contented sigh he squinted up at the white sun – satisfied with his fatigue, satisfied with the weather. At least exercise still had the capacity to help him forget the meaning of mundanity for a while. As he re-tied his tuft of a bun, Paladin Danse trod over with something in hand.

“That was...interesting,” Danse’s brows lifted. He held out the hoodie that had been chucked away during the fight and Nate, suddenly feeling exposed, mumbled a word of gratitude zipping it on and stepping behind the pump to fill a baby bath tub for laundry.

“Look at you, not even a scratch. Pre-war CQC training must have been brutal, but clearly effective.” 

“It wasn’t too bad. For me, anyway.” Because he’d been Good Little Tin Soldier. “Takes a lot of practice but it’s not as hard as you might think. In fact, the trickiest syllabus was Defusing Violent Behavior.”

Danse scratched his chin. “I suppose a certain level of charismatic proficiency is required to not simply resort to your side-arm. Still. I wonder if the scribes have any detailed records on their regimen, it would make an excellent addition to our repertoire.” 

“Is it much of a focus in the Brotherhood? How’s your hand-to-hand?”

He simpered, watching the shirt wrung dry in the vault dweller’s hands, “Not remarkable, I’m afraid. It’s been shelved ever since the laser rifle and power armor came into the picture.”

At this point Cait interrupted from the other side of the road, “Oy! Ready for round two!”

Nate gave her a wave as he spread his shirt over the patio chair. “Well, that’s me,” he cleared his throat.

This humdrum conversation had been going well enough. Till now – when he stood around, shifting his weight, glancing expectantly for a tactful response from the paladin who began to look perplexed at the prolonged silence.

Silence that had likely crossed the line into cringe-worthy.

“...You can leave, you know.”

“Yessir,” Nate whispered more to himself when he skittered out of the vicinity like a kid out on recess.

 

That night, the others might have downed their scotch and made merry for the rest of the evening, but he used his glass of liquor with a kitchen towel dipped in and onto his busted lip. That last round with Cait did not end well. For him.

The day of clear blue sky led to a frigid night where anything anyone did meant clouds of misted breath swirling before their lips and nostrils. It made it taxing to do anything but sit next to his stove polishing his knives. But alas, Preston’s schedule dictated it was a shared dinner night tonight, so forced mingling it was.

At one of the houses at the top of the lane, the one they’d repurposed into the mess hall, Nate sat on the doorstep away from the crowd.

Everyone else, including the brewing robot, hung out inside with drinks and food while the sound of the blaring radio spilled into the outdoors. Travis Miles now sounded like he’d been keeping a secret alter ego as he presented snippets of news on a ‘spooky’ incident at Salem on top of a useless bit on someone finding a bottle cap with a star on it, all without a single hitch.

He sipped his drink gingerly, careful not to agitate the cut on his bottom lip. Preston was the one manning the grill next to him, so he was just the willing gopher who brought the guy whatever he needed for the slabs of brahmin steaks cooking over charcoal.

It was comfortable, quiet. Neither of them minded a bit that they’d spoken hardly two words to each other.

Preston whistled along to _Blue Moon_ , methodically flipping tatoes and meat for the settlers. And when Dogmeat trotted by and laid muddy front paws on his trousers he went inside, gave him a fat bone from the leg of brahmin they’d chopped up for the meal and they watched Dogmeat speed off to dig a hole behind the house.

“So,” Nate tightened the collar of his coat around his neck, “how are you, Preston? 

Preston cleared his throat, “I’m good. I’m good.”

“That’s...good.”

For a while, Piper and Nick’s squabble about the future of Publick Occurrences on top of the radio was the only noise that occupied their lax conversation for a long while.

“Things are finally looking up,” Preston added with a small, rare smile. “You? How you holding up?” 

‘Been feeling antsy for my next kill,’ he wanted to say.

“I’m good. Just waiting for Tinker Tom to be done with the interceptor.”

“Should be any day now, right?”

Piper chose that moment to pop out and berate the cook. “Preston, would you stop already! You need to eat too!” she squeaked. So, she was a loud drunk.

“Piper, I should be – ”

“No, no. No buts!” She rapped his shoulder, too tipsy to realize he hadn’t mentioned a ‘but’ even once. “Get in there, or all you’re gonna have are the Salisbury Steaks. Tell him, Blue!”

“She’s right. Go ahead, I’ll take care of this,” Nate stood up and stretched.

Before Preston got any more words in he got dragged away like a hungry workaholic torn from his desk.

In the meantime the vault dweller gulped down the rest of his scotch and picked up the steel tongs just as MacCready hollered through the windows, “Hey boss, give me another hunk of shank, will ya? Medium rare.”

“Coming right up,” he replied, but then stuck a fork through a piece of that exact description and claimed it with a keen bite. If Preston cooked like this in the first place he wouldn’t have to fit himself indoors with all the others.

He brought in plate after plate of greased tato slices as he grilled like a damn machine, begrudgingly thinking this must have been like one of those orthodox community barbecue events hosted by the picket fence nuclear family. No pun intended.

He’d been lucky enough to escape those redundant rituals, but whether her life should have been the payment was another story.

As the food cooked over waning flames he watched the empty lane, his only entertainment. Empty was the operative word. No more street lamps, no more lit cracks in atomic curtains, no more holiday lights at Madam Luther’s house. The world was now darker than the night sky and he enjoyed every bit of it. 

No more roaring auto-mowers, no more mailboxes getting slammed shut. Best of all, no more needing to live next to Mister DiPietro from two doors down, who always used to leer at him even when given a friendly smile. Likely because that coot was always one perplexed look away from calling the Report Red hotline every single time they crossed paths.

The worst part was that geezer had been one of the growing majority, the one that called him names or held him up against double standards whenever he set foot outside his house. Sometimes even when he kept to himself, now that he thought about it.

Maybe mankind wasn’t meant to inherit anything if it could be so stupidly shallow. Maybe Lady Justice owed the big ones a colossal favor when they fell and destroyed half the fucking planet. Pity the ones like DiPietro hadn’t died by his own hands.

 

He’d drifted off.

Wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d stewed in contempt before he noticed someone talking to him. In what felt like slow motion he turned to find out who, eyes vacant and heart struggling to fight a long-forgotten fury when it was already heavy with vengeance and regret.

It was Danse, the legacy of a bygone era. Great.

It sounded like the paladin was in the middle of asking him something when that expectant look turned into one of mild concern.

“Your lip’s bleeding,” Danse muttered.

The thumb on his chin felt cold, tarnished to deep crimson as it grazed his skin and snapped him out of his stupor. Within seconds – anger had fizzled out into astonishment and mild confusion.

He blinked, gaze darting to the hand still inches away, then back up to the shadowed face. 

Danse grimaced at the blood-stained finger. In a flash, Nate took the kitchen towel sitting next to the barbecue, reached out, and hastily wiped it clean like he was covering up evidence, clearly aware of the disparity between the steady pulse under the wrist he held and his own turbulent heartbeat.

He then pressed the whisky-soaked cloth against his split lip and went back to the mundanity of cooking.

“You want something, Paladin?” he asked, in a voice he’d never heard himself use before. 

Danse was looking for more beef shanks – and a dripping chunk fresh off the fire practically flew to his plate the moment he asked.

The house was warm and merry as friggin’ Christmas, Nate expected him to go back in but he didn't. Danse stayed outside, leaning on the wall behind him, tearing off bites from the meat held up by a fork.

Stiff as a board, he wiped a spatula and turned over the vegetables, feeling like he was in AIT with his instructor’s eyes perpetually glued to his back. 

“I knew you’d change your mind,” Danse said with a smirk thick in his voice.

The sizzling beef suddenly seemed like the most fascinating thing in the world as Nate studied them with warm tongs hovering over.

Their interaction two nights ago had been a strange event. After all that talk about professionalism he still couldn’t believe he’d willingly asked the paladin what was wrong – willingly listened to his personal baggage when he loosened his tongue and spoke. About Haylen. About Corvega and what happened to the rest of team Gladius. About his self-disappointment in failing to mentor his newest member in a competent manner.

Even now the vault dweller couldn’t believe he’d stayed that still and quiet, trying with all he had to understand the motivation and sentiment behind every word that filled his ears even if it was mostly Greek to him, if only to be able to say the right thing when it came down to it.

Evidently he cared a great deal when the man was hunched over a table with a stress-induced headache. Damn it.

He said something over his shoulder, but so quietly he had to repeat himself when Danse stepped closer, bringing smells of oil and soil and sour, sweaty fabric wafting up to his nose.

“I said,” Nate muttered, “I’m learning more than I ever expected under you. And I can’t speak for the rest of the team but I don’t think I’d find a better CO. Even if I wanted to.” 

It was true, more than once the paladin had exhibited tactical prowess that saved him a limb or two in battle, and based on the leftovers of team Gladius he was just as exceptional at maintaining morale under duress.

Either way, by spitting that out, he’d just added to the list of unbelievable things he’d done. There was a strange sort of silence after that when neither of them said a word as their frosty breaths mingled, flowing over his shoulder and disappearing over his chest.

Danse walked around him, stood upwind to the smoky grill with an unreadable expression over the gleam of the charcoal embers. He cleared his throat, delicate as the crackling flames.

“You’re burning food.”

Nate glanced down, seized the spatula and scraped meat and soggy vegetables off the grates in haste. He set down the grill cover and in he went to send the final platter, much to everyone’s chagrin.

They’d gotten even noisier in there. Duos and packs spattered around the mess hall, exchanging funny stories or discussing nothing in particular. How anyone could ever get a word in when they sat in a group of more than three was witchcraft to him.

He went out again, keen to spend alone time with a fat glass of whisky that was rapidly warming in his hand. But when he saw the lone figure on the kerb that was Paladin Danse, the plan to go straight home fell as redundant as a dud grenade and he trudged towards him like a bloatfly to a bonfire.

“That’s a big one,” Danse raised a brow when he settled next to him. “You can’t be drinking that all on your own. No, that’s not what I meant,” he added when it was offered to him.

Nate pulled back the glass and took the first sip. “Freezing out here. Why aren’t you inside?”

“Let’s just say it’s a little hard to fraternize with the Brotherhood’s reputation being what it is in the Commonwealth.”

He pressed the cold glass against his swollen lip in silence. Never thought about it that way before.

Their shadows stretched over to the other side of the road like a pair of stick-thin ghosts. Inside, someone had put on a record with _You’re The Devil In Disguise_ on the console stereo, though it was a chore to pay attention to because of what sounded like the whole house shouting along to the repetitive song. 

Danse munched his last mouthful in utter disapproval. “Good God. What a rabble.”

It was a miracle they could still hear each other over the noise coming from the mess hall. Evidently this was why the food committee had been reluctant to break out the alcohol tonight, despite the morale-boosting factor.

By now he’d drunk half his glass but all he earned was a slightly better mood. He held his drink by the rim, hanging over his boots with arms propped over his knees, not minding the noise so much.

Danse huffed. “I’d suggest slowing down considerably. How can you even drink that? All I can smell from here is liquid sugar.”

“Are you kidding? This is Laphroaig, smokiest you can get,” Nate scoffed, his golden reflection on the whisky smiling back at him.

“If I may ask,” Danse began with the slightest hesitance. “Those rings around your neck. What are they for?”

Everything left a blurred trail when his attention shifted over to the other man. “Wedding bands,” he answered. Him and his wife’s. “You know what wedding bands are?”

“Oh. Oh, I see. Yes, I’m aware of what they are.”

Everyone had pretty much standard flickers across their faces whenever they found out for the first time that he was a widower. Sympathy, awkwardness, even shame, sometimes. The paladin’s painted sympathy that was somehow mixed in with indifference, like he had no idea how it was supposed to feel to lose the love of your life.

“When did she di—pass?”

“Not very long before I became an Initiate.” Five months since he’d time-traveled.

The subject met an abrupt end when Danse didn’t say another word. No ‘how’ or ‘where’. Some people did that – refused to offer condolences because they were either too embarrassed or were trying to avoid a pity fest. Either way, he’d learned it was always up to him to decide how the conversation should proceed at this point.

So Nate asked about Haylen and Rhys, about what he’d gauged about their performances so far. That finally got the guy’s speech patterns less hesitant and more precise. Evaluation, mitigation, work – his natural habitat.

They were meaningless words, only right now he wouldn’t trade it for anything else. One empty, partially-shared tumbler of whisky later and they spoke way, way off the record, exchanging war stories.

Apparently one time at Bannister crater, Paladin Krieg sprinted in partial power armor through volleys of laser fire and jury rigged an eyebot to detonate itself on impact against the Enclave troops. In Nate’s imagination Krieg looked like an older, harrier copy of Paladin Danse. 

Then Nate told him about the time half his platoon fell through ice over Knik Arm with ninety pounds of equipment strapped to them. He’d caught a cold that lasted till the end of his tour, when he received his Distinguished Service Cross he sneezed across the stage.

“You have a decoration?” Danse exclaimed in surprise, and for some reason really wanted to see the medal. So in a tingly glaze they walked to his home, dropping off dirty dishes into the plastic basin behind the mess hall along the way.

When Nate stepped through the front door he suddenly thought about the first time he’d invited Nora over to his apartment. Two centuries back, she’d gotten lost, he walked for an hour under the yellow street lamps of Houston to meet her. Same yellow as the glow in the paladin’s chestnut eyes as he studied the bronze cross under the florescent light dangling off the living room ceiling.

Danse traced his thumb over the inscribed letters, studying the make more than anything. “A commendation from the old world,” he hummed.

“Well, not exactly a trove of purified water. That’d be something, wouldn’t it.” Nate leaned back to the couch with a yawn. His respect for fellow recipients was the only reason that cross stayed in pristine condition.

“You’re selling yourself short. Any initiative beyond the call of duty earns a distinction in my book. So how did it happen, exactly?”

Long story short, he’d dragged all three surviving soldiers out of a shelled IMV and wiped out the rest of a Chinese ambush alone one night. The exchange of seven lives for a gold-plated ornament might have left a harrowing taste in someone else’s mouth, but he told himself he’d never really gotten to know them anyway.

Saying that much was a troublesome credit to the liquor. There was a small pause before the paladin looked away with an expression he couldn’t place.

“It doesn’t work that way,” he shook his head. “Still. By yourself with a broken arm? Sounds almost like one of Maxson's stories.”

“The snowstorm was good cover. And the Chinese, they were all skittering around with headlights,” Nate gestured to his forehead. “Bullseye stuff.”

Then Danse gave a small chuckle that crinkled his tired eyes. To the semi-intoxicated vault dweller the sound was a breath of fresh air as he watched him gently put the cross back into the velvet case, realizing with a sudden warm spell that for the first time he’d just made the man laugh.

“Mm. I should get going,” Danse mumbled at his watch. “Got a meeting with Paladin-commander Marx at the western checkpoint tomorrow.”

“Okay. You know where the armory is, if you want to stock up.”

“I appreciate your humoring my curiosity. I’ve never known anyone who’s been decorated by pre-war military awards, obviously.”

Like a good host Nate opened the door and stood aside. Even without the power armor the paladin was taller by an inch or two, he’d just noticed. But at this point he also had the urge to punch himself for acknowledging ridiculously useless information.

Outside on his stoop, Danse cracked his neck with a smug curve in his lips. “Need I remind you – a thousand pushups. _I_ certainly haven’t forgotten.”

Nate pursed his lips and mumbled a ‘yup’.

“I suppose I’ll allow you three breaks. But that’s all you get.”

“I’m...sure that’ll be plenty.”

“We’ll see about that.” Then came another chuckle made his lips twitch.

They said brisk goodnights. And the door shut with a pathetic squeak, leaving him hovering behind it way longer than it was necessary.

He was alone once more. With one hand still on the handle he sighed, massaging the muscles on his cheek from too much smiling. With fingers icy against his unusually warm skin.

With a foolish grin he left the room, retreating further into sanctum as he revelled in the companionship or infatuation or whatever it was his neurochemistry induced whenever he saw the other man – deciding not to care one bit that all this was doomed from the very start.


	10. Blowin' In The Wind

When someone – a normal someone – finds out their son has been missing for so long he’s turned into the sixty-year-old leader of a group of slave-driving boogeymen, they’d usually need to sit down, be furious, be shell-shocked, cry and refuse to believe anything, maybe even pass out.

But he gave it three blinks and accepted the whole situation in a single word.

Hell of a story, but it made hell of a lot of sense. Even Shaun – the _older man_ that called himself Shaun – was rendered speechless for several long seconds before he began to nod slowly, like he was taking mental notes of said reaction for future references of any sort.

A two-century-awaited conversation and it had come and gone as quick and rigid as breaking off a loose thread.

Like father, like son, apparently.

After the bombs he’d sworn to never let the world catch him off guard again. It made him jaded, immune to the lustre many things had to offer, but above all kept him prepared for absolutely anything. Even when his child turned out to be partially responsible for the widespread oppression of a state, of both humans and synthetics.

But son or not, Desdemona didn’t believe the Institute and the Railroad could cooperate. Ever.

And somewhere in the worn-down cogs of his mind he didn’t either. How could he, when no one wanted to even begin to think about compromise.

Oh well, he thought. These things happen.

These things happen.

“Hey, boss,” Deacon said in glum tone outside the Railroad escape tunnel. “You don’t have to be the one to do this. I mean if you want to stay, then great. But if you choose to walk now I won’t blame you, you know.”

“What are you talking about?” Nate eyed him cluelessly while he reloaded and reorganized his weapons.

“That whole spying and staging a coup against your own kid? If you wanna bug out, it'll stay between us. After all you’ve done for us you probably deserve that much.”

A sentiment appreciated. But like that would change anything. He automatically spouted the usual ‘I’m good. I appreciate your concern. We should get moving.’

 

The plan that evening was to visit the settlers at County Crossing for more information about the Gunners that had been extorting them, but when they got within a mile from the settlement the sounds of gunshots cut clean through the night. Earlier than scheduled.

He immediately launched off into a jog, with Deacon not far behind, groaning about long-distance running.

Poor fellas, the whole lot of them, because someone’s family or lover or friend had probably been killed by the time they’d arrived seven minutes later. Gunners – because they’d been so caught up in fighting the settlers and a handful of minutemen, almost the whole troop of fifteen or so was wiped out by the power pair they hadn’t seen coming from their flanks.

It took less than three minutes before the compound fell quieter. The stragglers swore at the bunch before fleeing across the road, towards the nuclear power plant.

Something about that scene blew a fuse in him. Like a dog running on blind instinct all he could think of was to chase after and hunt them till the ends of the earth.

“Cover,” he yelled to Deacon as he sprinted off.

“They’re falling back, boss. Maybe we should let the Commonwealth do the job.”

He couldn’t. He really needed to kill someone. Really needed to see the light gradually snuffed out of someone’s eyes tonight and this was perfect. The Gunners started this, retreat was out of the question at this stage.

They sure could run, though. So he fell to his knee, lined up the scope of his Gauss rifle and then eradicated two out of three brains in an instant. Much to the shock of Deacon’s cowering form behind him.

Three hundred caps per cartridge that let him pierce through three inches of titanium in less than a tenth of a second and he’d spent two of them on two skulls free of power armor. Talk about overkill. If they’d screamed at each other he definitely couldn’t hear, over the seventy yards of blowing wind and clattering mesh fences. 

There was still that last raider. That little roach was smarter than he’d given them credit for and had started running in zig-zag in a pathetic attempt to avoid the crosshair. But at a near zero degree angle of movement their effort was close to pointless – he blew the Gunner’s right shin clean off and watched them fall to the ground.

He definitely heard a howl this time.

With his mouth practically salivating he stalked right over, through the overgrown grass, through the concrete debris of shattered water reactors where his geiger counter clicked like crazy.

Behind, Deacon kept after him asking, ‘what are you doing? What the hell are you doing?’

The Gunner held up a heavily modified Glock 20 which flew off to the side when the vault dweller shot his palm clean off.

That choked-back shriek stirred his blood as much as it was maddening.

“Kill me already, you fucking chicken!” The mangled man had dignity even with clear sludge leaking out his mouth and nostrils.

Nate shot the guy’s knee and this time the Gunner yelled for him to stop. _Stop. Sto_ – he shot the inside of his elbow, of the other arm that still had a set of fingers at the end.

_God, stop. Please._ And he punched a bullet through the guy’s crotch.

That cry was inhuman. Maybe the tip of his nose, next.

He was in his own world. Didn’t even notice his partner shouting his name – coming up to him – disarming him with alarmed force.

Deacon aimed Tommy Whispers’ gun at the wailing raider and shut him up with a bullet to the forehead. 

Even after the final howl echoed off inside his ears Nate still hadn’t taken his eyes off the riddled corpse. The soil was soaked in blood, inky under the full moon. A breeze swirled the smell of iron and the first signs of an emptied bladder and bowels all around them like they’d just stepped into a warzone. When he finally clambered back to earth, when Deacon let out a faint, shaky sigh, his weighty gaze shifted up to meet the pair of sunglasses.

It became all they did for a long while. Staring at one another. Those ridiculous shades in night time against his own wide intoxicated eyes. He’d made the wizard with words speechless and he wasn’t even trying.

Deacon was the first to turn away. He walked off to the farm without a word, crunching grass under the soles of his shoes with the pistol still tightly in hand.

Nate followed.

The show was over, there was nothing left there. Nothing at all.

Along the way he re-lived the spectacle in his head, again and again. That raider, utterly at the mercy of his hands. And to think there were people who didn’t believe in the existence of the soul. You just had to look into a pair of eyes to see life swiped out of them like squeegee to a wet window and you could tell, without a doubt.

And that ever so slight, unfabricated tremble in his partner’s lips. It was primal.

 

He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination. But the remaining settlers, along with the four Minutemen wielding laser muskets, they were strangely quiet. Maybe they’d just sensed these things from Deacon’s posture or his gait or whatever special aura around him that he himself could never tell. Or maybe they were just in plain shock over the whole ordeal.

In the least, by the end of the night a few of them had come up to thank the General. 

“You showed up just in the nick of time.”

“I don’t know what we would’ve done without you.”

“I don’t have much, but I hope this helps.”

By the end of the meet-and-greet he’d earned a dirty tote bag of mutfruits and one chunk of cold mirelurk steak. He brought it all to Deacon, who’d settled himself into a corner of the roof-less pre-war house, sorting through gear and looted ammo.

He stood behind him with food hanging off one hand, unsure of what to say. It made Deacon jump in fright when he finally noticed him standing there.

“Jesus,” Deacon spat, “I thought sneaking up on people was my thing.”

Wasn’t the first time he’d scared someone just by standing nearby. Why no one ever expected him to be anywhere was beyond him.

Nate held out the bag. “You hungry? I...can make something.”

It was the best he could do since he wasn’t even sure what he’d done wrong. But Deacon’s shoulders slumped all of a sudden. And the guy somehow managed to make it clear he was rolling his eyes, even from behind those shades.

“Alright, that’s it.” Deacon got to his feet. “We’re talking. Right here, come on.”

They walked right out in the open field outside the settlement and Deacon asked in the iciest tone, “What the hell was that?”

Nate peered back, purely vacant, his lips scarcely parted like he was about to answer. But he didn’t. Just stood still as rock, petrified before the glaring display of someone else’s indignation.

“Cat got your tongue _now_?” Deacon sighed in frustration. “You know, up till now I thought it was just who you were. All chilled out, taking things in a stride. But that wasn’t it.

“I’ve been catching on. You just don’t care. About anything. About the Railroad, about Shaun. Am I right or am I right?”

A fraction of a frown crept to his face and it was Nate’s turn to be annoyed now. “And where the hell did this come from? I’m doing exactly what you told me to do. Playing the field, aren’t I? I’m even selling out my son for you people.”

“There – sounds like that’s where you’re confusing concern for revenge,” Deacon flung his hands. “Look, when I lost Barbara I was broken too. I was one hell of a furious lump at every tiniest fucking thing around me.

“But you, you’re a big can of empty. Only time you ever act human is when you’re swapping words with that Brotherhood friend of yours.”

That wasn’t true. Surely.

Deacon scowled at him. “Does this mean you’re gonna flip? Because if you are, hey, I’d really appreciate you shooting me a warning right about now.”

“I’m not gonna _flip,_ I’m fine where I am now,” Nate sighed, making a point to ignore that deep down he wished he could. Him choosing to side with the underdogs, the losing end of the war, was the colossally illogical move on his part. Illogical, but it was what his wrenching gut was telling him to do.

“Look, you don’t have to believe me but I’m telling you now,” Nate leered from under his eyelids. “I’m giving my all for the synths because they sure as hell deserve any help they can get.

“But some days I need to feel like I’m the one really in charge, so I do my job,” he pointed towards the carnage grounds, “with a happy face. Why is that so bad? Not like I’m going to fly off the handle on you.”

Sunglasses faced right back. With hands on his belt Deacon took a long drag of air, bowed his head to the ground, chewing the inside of his cheek. 

“Hell, that’s _so_ not the point. But I don’t know. I guess at the end of the day we’ll see about that, won’t we,” his glasses darted up, his voice rasping so low it sounded like a purr. “Tell you what, I used to be on first-name basis with this sort of behavior and now I’m wondering if you really do need help. It ain’t right. Hell, talk to Carrington or something. Because if you don’t – ”

He shook his head like it physically hurt his neck to do so.

Nate never found out whatever would’ve happened or not. All he saw was the guy’s back as he trod away, leaving him standing by his lonesome with arms crossed.

He was perfectly fine. Why in the world would he need help?


	11. Don't Smoke In Bed

C6. Every time he visited the old vault, that stenciled mark on the smoothened concrete was the closest he could ever get to her icy tomb.

The last time he’d looked at her face through the crystal-edged glass had been after his return from Concord and never again since then. Even when he’d been coming by once every week for the past five months to sit next to her on the frozen lake of a floor, feeling the dull humming of the cryo chamber against his head.

Bunker Hill had been a major disaster. Those synths had been kept uncompromised – but at the cost of more than two platoons of Brotherhood soldiers he’d turned his own gun on. When those troopers realized he’d double-crossed them he killed them all before they could lay a finger on their radio.

What a massacre. And lucky as hell it hadn’t been Danse or Haylen under any of those helmets.

But the problem wasn't so much the killing as it was the deafening wake up call that screamed shit was hitting the fan. Hard.

Things were simpler when it was just the Institute to worry about, before an additional bunch of kids called the Brotherhood of Steel joined in with their own righteous hysterics. All the Minutemen would have done was postpone the impending eruption because these wastelanders were never going to play nice.

Because humans were like so. Because war never, ever changes.

They’d lost High Rise. Him and the rest of Ticonderoga lay bloody in the safehouse up in the sky and now no one knew where the synth in transit had gone. Desdemona had slammed her palm down onto the briefing table at that news, crushing her lit cigarette without a flinch. Deacon didn’t say a word as he just aimed his shades at the piled maps of the underground sewer system, not moving a nerve throughout the meeting.

It’s a surreal feeling, realizing you’ve passed the point of no return. At its most mundane it’s the night before an exam when you all of a sudden notice there’s no way for you to cover everything in time.

He wrapped the cloth rug around him like a cocoon and slumped over with a soft thump when his head met the floor. He buried his face into the rug to warm up his nose, shutting his eyes, drifting off to a lullaby of pumping and clicking vapor-compressors.

Deacon had warned him about this once before. How he needed to make a choice sooner or later and how it should be the right one.

 

“Mister Nate?”

Codsworth.

He felt like he’d dozed off for barely five seconds but his eyes stung when he tried to blink up at vault ceiling, at the Mr. Handy hovering over his head. Bothering him in his sleep. It was in the middle of the afternoon, didn’t people know by now that he was nocturnal?

“My sincerest apologies, sir. But,” Codsworth emitted in the lowest output, “a vertibird has just arrived in the neighborhood. They’re asking specifically for you.”

He hadn’t signalled for one. Did someone let up a string of smoke somewhere by accident? Nate stood up, rubbing at the corners of his eyes. “A Brotherhood aircraft?”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t tell. They’re well-armed, is all I can say. My propulsion jets set for top speed when they started to demand my identification and serial number...”

Brotherhood of Steel, no doubt. He pressed his fingers against his eyes with a deep breath. They left the vault together but separated before they hit the bridge where Codsworth deliberately took the long around.

When the vault dweller stepped off the curb and onto the road one of the troopers ran up to him, hastily stating that ‘an immediate meeting with Elder Maxson was imperative’.

Nate swallowed thickly, straining to see past the girl’s eyewear for signs that perhaps showed that they knew. What he’d done to their soldiers at Bunker Hill nights ago.

“What’s this about?” he tried to ask.

“You’ll find out, Knight. Let’s get moving.”

That usually meant they were too grunt to know where the order had come from. Still, in the whole thirty-five-minute vertibird ride to Logan International under the afternoon sun, he consciously willed himself to relax, to assess his options and take any problems as they come. Business as usual.

But what were they playing at? A public execution? An interrogation. Or maybe something terrible happened to the rest of team Gladius and they planned to read him their wills. With a hand incessantly on his handgun he took in measured breaths, staring out the dusty glass and keeping his expression more inscrutable than usual.

 

At least the Prydwen seemed normal enough. Patrols were no tighter. No pitchforks or torches, no one spitting at his boots as the initiate escorted him into the ship.

Up in command deck, Maxson told the initiate to leave the room before he eyed him with a look that could stab even the most hardened generals of the Old World.

“Is there something you wish to tell me, Knight?” the boy began.

He might have looked clueless but in his head, Nate wondered if his quick draw really was quick enough to take down the esteemed leader of the Brotherhood of Steel.

“Um...no,” was all he said. In a ridiculously pathetic attempt at lying. Where the hell was Deacon when he needed him?

Maxson hinted at a silent sneer through those pearly whites. “Proctor Quinlan completed the decryption of the data you recovered from the Institute.”

The data he’d shared back when he thought brute force was the only way to remove the Institute from the picture. There shouldn’t have been anything about him or the Railroad on tape.

But everything began to make more sense the more Maxson went on. Quinlan’s team had allegedly stumbled upon a list of missing Institute synths – which led them to have reason to believe Paladin Danse possessed a flawless genetic match to a so-called M7-97.

A twitch in his brow was the only reaction he gave, above his otherwise stony gaze and the mild goosebumps forming along his arms.

Well, if the shoe fits. Especially when the paladin had just up and left the radar without any warning. Anyone could tell he was exhibiting strange behavior. Had he known all this time and played him like a fiddle?

“I’m finding it difficult to believe he never confided in you – and then swore you to secrecy.”

He cleared his throat. “How sure are you that he knew this himself?”

“Don’t change the subject, Knight. Were you aware of this?”

“I was not. And with all due respect, sir,” Nate mustered his plainest eyes, “I’m stunned you would question my conviction to the Brotherhood. After all I’ve done, without question – for you and for Liberty Prime when I had no idea it even existed.”

Maxson’s jaw tightened as he studied him a long while, seething in doubt. “All that still doesn’t absolve you of your duty. Danse is a monstrosity of technology and our mission here is clear – the Institute and its creations _need to be destroyed_.”

Nate had guessed the point of this whole errand minutes before Maxson finished his rant and ordered for Danse’s execution.

This was good, that it’d been him assigned this task. It gave him a chance to make an informed decision based on the other side of the story. Evidently the challenge here was not to seem too enthusiastic in hunting down his sponsor.

“Consider it done.” He gave a bland salute before he turned around, sharply aware of the unreadable expression Maxson eyed him with through the reflection in the windows.

As he stepped through the arch the Elder muttered.

“I must say, Knight. You’re taking this news rather well.”

Nate, acting like he hadn’t heard a word, almost tripped on the way out.


	12. Hard Luck Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arghhh I spent way too long on this chapter!

He would never, ever forget the moment he’d laid his eyes on the synth construction apparatus – when the world vanished and all he saw and heard was that gargantuan, sterile-white machine needling, prodding, distributing.

Creating.

Under that brilliant white light, bone by bone and nerve by nerve, he might as well have been standing in the garden of Eden.

Now, the paladin turned out to be one of them.

As much as a substantial part of him wanted to slather salt water into to the wound the guy had just earned he wanted to see how the man – synth – was dealing with the news. Ultimately, reaction showed just as much as action. Denial equated to fraudulence. Humiliation, growth. Anger, confusion.

Haylen had been right, in more ways than one. There he was, deep in the chasm of the listening station, looking like the smallest man in the world. If that was even possible.

Nate stepped into the dishevelled room, handgun aimed to the ground with the safety off. Being soft didn’t necessarily mean being naive. It wasn’t hard to notice the loaded laser rifle sitting on the listening radio, still within the rogue synth’s reach.

But the look Danse had given when they saw each other – it was guilt, a hint of fear and shame. A lot of shame. That, he got. They stood several feet apart, the ceiling lamp between them casting shadows that pointed outwards in perfectly opposite directions.

“Hey,” he whispered like he approached an animal he didn’t want to spook.

Danse’s words were just as quiet. “Here you are. I’m not surprised Maxson sent you, he never liked to do the dirty work himself.”

The place was stuffy and way too silent, not even a drop of water or buzzing from those cold white lamps above the service pipes. Spend too long here and one might actually drive themself mad.

Nate held up his pistol with two fingers, gently holstered it, and laid down his secondary firearm and combat knife onto the floor as Danse’s brows knitted in off-balanced disapproval at all that willing surrender of weaponry.

He dragged out two dusty swivel chairs from the transmission desks on either side of him and they sat down, face to face and almost heart to heart. A deja-vu.

 

What the born-again synth must have been feeling, he had no clue how to rectify. This wasn’t the type of damage-control he was expert in. In a cautious gamble he asked if he’d known all this while.

Of course he didn’t. Synths were the enemy, until Quinlan got that list decoded.

“Everyone wants you dead. Apart from Haylen.”

The paladin’s eyes shot away at the mention of her name. “And you?”

“I want to know what you want.”

Danse’s frown deepened. “What I want couldn’t be more irrelevant.” He paused, as if the next few words weighed a thousand stars in his mind, “I’m not human. Machines were never meant to make their own decisions, period. 

“Technology that’s run amok is what brought the entire world to its knees and humanity to the brink of extinction, haven't you learned anything?”

The usual spiel.

“You got that right. Synths aren’t human, they’re synths.” Nate folded his arms. “And you’re one that can feel and think, it’s what drove you here in the first place. You – old you – must have gone through the Railroad, why else would you be classified as missing?”

“Get to the point, will you.”

“It’s not crystal to you? You’re a walking fuckin’ paradox, you’re here right now because a machine made an autonomous choice.”

Even at a time like this it propelled them to the verge of another ideological debate. One wanted to talk about the whole damned concept of artificial intelligence while the other sought to discuss the past – two redundant lines of argument that danced around the obvious, for no real reason other than to buy a smidgen of time.

Before it could get out of hand Nate got up, got out a well-used holotape from the front pocket of his duffel and sat back down in annoyance.

Danse looked more tired now than ever as he smoothed his frown with his palm. “Now what are you doing?”

The holotape slid into the pip-boy and the underground room filled with the recording of a man who spoke about fear. About being hunted. About losing all his memories and trading identity for survival.

That shaky voice echoed off the walls with the volume on the pip-boy turned as high as it could go, sounding as human as can be.

“That,” Nate dropped the pip-boy to the ground, patience quickly wearing thin, “was an escaped synth. Might as well have been you though, spouting all that. How would you even know after losing your memories?”

Danse didn’t seem to care for whatever he was trying to say. All he did was watch the floor with a distracted stare and asked where he’d gotten that holotape.

Nate gritted his teeth. “The Railroad, where else. With them I’ve seen synths come and go, with no reason other than to live free and get away from that same institution you’ve waged war against. Human or not, it shouldn’t make you any less...you.”

“The Railroad.” Danse’s lips snapped into a rigid line. “Then it’s no wonder we’re having this discussion.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

For the first time tonight Danse looked, really looked, firm into his eyes.

“It means my life is not yours to use as a bolster in their misguided crusade for freedom. Stop forcing me to change – don’t think I haven’t noticed your ridiculous efforts since Fort Strong.”

If Haylen had been here instead of him this would have gone way more smoothly. The vault dweller was at a complete lost now, there was rapidly growing sorrow in those eyes before him and he had no idea what he’d said to worsen the situation to this point.

“Christ,” he let out the biggest sigh, burying his face into his palms. “I’m not trying to use you. I know we’re on different ends of the battlefield here but – ”

“That’s exactly it. I’m sorry.” Under this light the paladin’s eyes glowed like weathered titanium. “This body may be synth, but my heart and mind belong to the Brotherhood of Steel. You need to understand that.”

Nate leaned back into the chair. The room went colder than a butcher’s freezer when for a split second, he actually did. Understood each word, every fiber of reason that clung to each one despite how fervently he refused to.

If freedom was to be, without apology, who was he to stop one whose decision was to die for a belief? Seems between intervention and ripping away someone’s raison d’etre was a line as razor-thin as the fishing wire he used to choke his prey, and he knew better than to cross it blind.

His head felt like a worn contraption as he shrunk into his seat and ran his hand through his hair, like he was the one on trial here.

It was quiet again, way too quiet, the strange sound next to his ears was his heart skipping a beat when he realized this was doomed from the very beginning. That the synth chose to die and nothing he said or did would change his mind.

“Look,” Danse leaned forwards with a whisper, “I’m not blind to the fact that this must be difficult for you.”

“Stop that.” He looked up from under his lashes. “Stop treating me like a damned subordinate.”

“I’m not.”

“We are equals. Do you hear me? Always have been and always will be.”

It might as well have fallen on deaf ears, the way the pair of broken eyes he glared into stayed unchanged without so much as a twitch anywhere else.

This was going to happen. This was happening.

 

After a long minute of nothing Nate unholstered his handgun and stood up, habitually checking that his suppressor was screwed on tight. Even though he pretended he couldn’t, out the corner of his eye he saw how the paladin flinched and swallowed.

Two systematic steps behind the man and they heard each other take a muffled, shallow breath.

He took aim, barrel pointed at the back of the head of hair he’d watched countless times wherever they went, his grip as rock steady as his target.

Among all that Danse managed to point out, “Your safety’s still on.”

“I know,” he mumbled. “Think I’m stupid? Been a soldier longer than you.”

“With the way you’re speaking to me, I find that hard to believe. You’re acting rather child-like.”

The definite frown he heard in those words was a cherished comfort somehow. Anything, anything but heartache.

His thumb flicked the toggle behind the trigger guard and his thoughts wandered to wondering where the most painless shot to the skull was. Enemies were all he’d been trained to kill. Not whoever or whatever this was.

He told him to stand up. Wasn’t gonna do this aiming downwards. But even when he called out his name like a warning the paladin shook his head and muttered a stubborn no.

Back to the standoff it was. In his head, at least, because all the room waited for was the pull of his trigger. His eyes began to throb, in time with his hastening heartbeat as the silence now grew more deafening than ever and he asked himself what he was actually waiting for.

Shoot, finish, kill him. The familiar voice spoke but he smothered it with his grief.

“You don’t have to push everything away.”

He snapped out of his cycling thoughts.

Paladin Danse had turned a fraction, enough only for the end of his brow to be visible from behind, his cracked voice carrying a mild quiver that rattled the pistol.

“Take care of the team and they’ll take care of you.”

The vault dweller narrowed his eyes, closing in on the grip gap with his second palm because the glow-sights refused to stay still.

Danse cleared his throat like it had gone bone dry. “Remember that, whatever you do.”

 

...Nope.

No.

Nothing had to be like anything. Something’s not right here, he felt it in his bones.

He looked to the paper-strewn ground, eyes shut and chest twisting.

He lowered his gun, stormed back to where they began, only something didn’t quite feel like square one this time because along the way he released the magazine, dismantled the suppressor, the slide, and let it all plummet to the floor with a blaring clatter.

“Get a hold of yourself, soldier,” Danse snapped with a scowl at this display. “You’re too close to squandering any respect I have left for you.”

“This really what you want?” He sat himself down onto the flaky office chair, frowning at how Danse hadn’t moved an inch, as if moving at all would blemish his resolve. “Some kind of honor killing? Because if you do, I’ll put that back together.”

“We’re not going through this again. Need I remind you you’re not the only one capable of carrying out this order, however difficult you appear to be finding it.”

“Just – listen. This isn’t about that,” he said with a tremble, drilling his gaze in. “I need to know what it is you really want.”

His mask was slipping like an avalanche. He could feel it crumbling all around him and he couldn't care less.

Time slowed to a crawl when he got to his feet. “Try to forget the world, even for a second.”

In one move he fell to his knees before the other man and his narrowed eyes. He reached out, touched his hands. All he felt was ice.

Danse sighed, “Nate – ”

“Try. Try to forget right or wrong and tell me what you want. You’ve done it before in another life.”

He closed his eyes, bowed down. Felt the uncertain stare from above as the cold leather of the Brotherhood uniform pressed at his forehead.

Strip yourself of ego and morality and you’ll stare at freedom right at the face.

“What do you want?” he whispered.

As if saying those words again and again would impart his thoughts to the other mind somehow.

“ _What do you want?”_

Several moments tolled by. The fingers around his own tightened like a noose and he squeezed his eyes shut like a prayer.

With the bunker so deathly silent, he thought he could hear a pulse other than his own.

He breathed through his lips, slow and strenuously calm. A minute of maddening silence passed. Then two.

Then came the softest murmur from above.

“Maxson’s ordered you to execute me. What does it make me if I stood in your way?”

Head heavy, eyelids heavy, and he looked up at the pair of shadowed eyes that looked defeated, weary. But in them was a faint spark that glowed almost unnoticeable over the dismal reflection of the pale floor.

“You disobey Maxson’s orders to save the life of a synth, he would have you killed right along.”

They held their gaze. Their knuckles were white and neither of them noticed. The synth, framed by light before him, the only thing in the world he saw.

“Why would you risk your life to keep me alive?”

You already know why.


	13. Black Is The Color

Twenty-three hours and forty minutes. It was how long since he’d last slept. Danse, sitting across the contained fire in the listening post, was probably in the same boat if not worse.

Nate pulled up his hood and slid closer to the flames in a meager attempt to warm his shivering frame in a night made violently colder thanks to sleep deprivation.

It was over. That debacle had taken way longer than necessary when it’d been further complicated by Maxson traipsing up to the bunker entrance after he’d just spent an hour and a half convincing the paladin not to pull the trigger on himself.

And Maxson would die before admitting it, but half those words he’d shouted sounded like they were directed solely at Danse. The machine. The object, in his eyes.

The vault dweller had instinctively stepped before the Elder, about to offend the ass out of authority when he felt a firm hand on his shoulder from behind.

He’d reluctantly settled for an ultimatum. Reminded the Elder that he’d infiltrated the Institute, retrieved Dr. Li and the nukes, carried out every order to a T without requisitioning additional resources and without so much as a scratch.

Maxson shot him a look that could turn the hardiest Generals of the old world into jelly. But in that moment of sleep deprivation he felt like stone, through and through.

He took a slow step towards the unflinching boy. “With all due respect, sir. There’s a reason why everyone wants me on their side.”

He unbuttoned the handgun holster on his thigh with a swift, subtle move. If anyone noticed they certainly didn’t give any indication. “So I would suggest we forget about all this, go on with business as usual. Because if you lose him, consider me AWOL too.”

Arthur Maxson was the unrelenting combination of fierce and fearless – intimidation alone wouldn’t have cut it. In a bitter gamble Nate counted on the fact that he was a leader that ruled on charisma without the intellect.

After all, that boy had flown out here alone and here he was, still reasoning with everything he’d taken for granted in a follower. Under that fur coat he hadn’t been thoroughly resolved on the ridiculous call for an execution, that much was clear.

Maxson had been smart enough to know when to back down, at least. And when the vertibird took off into the half-dipped sun a small part of him had been disappointed at the bland turn of events.

The head of the Brotherhood of Steel Elder of the east coast would have made for a fine trophy.

 

His head was so busy sketching a picture of how a fight with Maxson would go he almost didn’t notice the warmed mirelurk cake Danse shoved at him. 

He was cold, starving, exhausted. Had that fuzzy feeling on his teeth from not having brushed overnight and his feet hurt from too much walking.

And Danse chose this time to bring up the Railroad.

In not quite as many words he asked how long it had been going on. If he’d been feeding them anything about the Brotherhood.

“A while,” was all Nate responded with as he swallowed the last of the mirelurk cake, watching dancing flames before his fingers.

“Have you been reporting intel over to them?”

This time Nate stared straight into the flickering shadows of his face and blurted out, “They know everything I know.”

A mile-long silence after that. So much so the crackling of the kindling began to grow deafening. Danse stopped eating, his expression painted utter despondency. With a lengthy sigh, he put his plate on the ground next to him.

Nate chugged water and got up to get another layer of shirt from his bag, mentally prepared for a verbal storm.

“You misled us. This whole time,” Danse said to his back.

There it was, the start of it. After sliding on a second thermal top he stared at the cracked concrete wall, waiting for the worst.

But apparently that was it, words that sounded neither angry nor bitter. That part made his heart sink deeper than ever.

Sleep fell to the back of his mind and he whipped around. Framed by the firelight the other man sat leaned over his knees, his head cupped in his palms, silhouette dark and worn like a used piece of coal.

This was his fault. He’d somehow worsened the worst day of the guy’s life.

“Danse.”

No response.

So he walked over, sat next to the fire with him.

“It didn’t start like this,” he added. And that did it, Danse’s eyes shot up with a supremely incredulous look. That was for sure the wrong thing to say.

“So you were why the siege at Bunker Hill failed?”

With all his might he couldn’t find the right words to that. All he did was keep a valiantly solid scrutiny on the paladin gradually piecing it all together in a growing fury.

Danse got up, made the steel chair squeak like a dying molerat as he did. He paced off to the fringes of the room, hands on hips, glancing over nothing in particular at the old shelves.

“I brought you up to the Prydwen with me because I thought I saw something in you.” His voice was stippled in gravel.

“That was different, the Brotherhood was still an uncertainty. I hadn’t even met Maxson yet.”

“I took you in myself after I lost my men. Was my leadership so worthless it ruined your integrity?”

Nate got to his feet in a cagey glower. “That’s got nothing to do with you, I’ve had trouble since day one that nobody could fix.”

“It has everything to do with me.” Danse turned around. “I’m – I was your sponsor. I'm aware we've had our differences but I thought I'd gotten through to you. And your response was to collude with the enemy?!”

“For Christ’s sake, the Railroad doesn't have to be an enemy. And after what just happened to you, how in hell you’re still stuck in – ”

“You had our trust!” The paladin’s eyes blazed. “Rhys, Haylen. The whole team watched your back like you were our own – ”

“And I would have laid down my life for you in a heartbeat!” Nate yelled back, arms flung to his sides. “With all that’s said and done. You think it was easy?!”

This was it. He was too tired to keep himself in check with this taxing man.

“This was _not supposed to happen_.” He saw red tearing a path through the bricks and debris separating them. “Don’t you get it? I’m not supposed to be here, I’m not supposed to give a shit that you wanted to blow your own circuits out because the Brotherhood – ”

He gritted his teeth, left that outburst unfinished. Because he simply couldn’t put it to words and because he saw the way the other man’s lashes flickered.

He stormed off, cursing himself out loud, analyzing in frustration how this happened in the first place. Losing his cool, caring so much for someone so damn ridiculous and causing chaos while he did.

This was an anomaly. It was pathetic, it was shallow, it disrupted his objective, it poisoned his mind. Every time he craved it, sought it out and lapped it all up he dug his grave with his own bare hands.

And this was where he ended up. Stuck in an underground bunker with a blindly-faithful synthetic man, overturning a rusty shelf of redundant radio equipment in a fit of violent rage. Danse didn’t even flinch.

“Fuck the Brotherhood,” he spat. “They screwed everything over. They screwed _you up_.”

Fuck them. Fuck Arthur Maxson for ruining Haylen and Clarke and all the other gullible, putty souls that had been promised a corrupted glory in this good-for-nothing world. He’d never hated anything so much in his life.

“Don't you dare,” Danse snarled. His eyes looked ready to bleed and Nate wanted to get outside, beat up the next raider he came across till his knuckles shattered.

 

They leered at one another, listening to each other breath. Moments meaninglessly flying by, ringing out in silence.

The vault dweller tore away first with a sharp breath, the air growing thinner and thinner as their tempers staggeredly simmered down.

Danse, with that perpetual frown and drooped shoulders, stepped backwards, fell against the wall, his half-concealed face of ire fading into hopelessness.

“I wanted to see the day you led your own team, you know,” he said under his breath, so quietly Nate wondered if he’d heard right. “And Haylen, she...”

With fingers woven behind his neck he looked to the floor. “Damn it,” his voice quivered. “I’m so lost. Everything’s a disaster. Everything I had. I’ve lost it all to a lie.

“Why do you think they programed me with capacity for these emotions? It’s...crippling.”

It was a good question. The majority of humans out there couldn’t even self-evaluate, what more this sort of critical thinking among Gen-3 synths.

Nate folded his arms and leaned against the ventilation column, lips tight.

The fire had died off a while ago, no one bothered to take care of it. For what felt like hours the room went still, rife with electricity like a hurricane had just passed.

Danse held his palms to his eyes for a while, taking deep, unsettled breaths and rubbing at his temples with a pained frown. Seems like he did that so much it could easily be trademarked to him.

The vault dweller’s dry eyes stung as he watched. Chiefly for the sake of talking he asked, “Headache still going on?”

Apparently it wasn’t worth a reply.

He sighed, went over to the front pocket of his duffel bag and brought over a couple of ibuprofen pills, which Danse then refused because he’d allegedly taken so much they don’t work on him anymore.

Nate glowered at the blister pack before pocketing it. He stared at the man in complete loss, barely noticed how his cheeks looked lightly flushed and his eyes a little red under the murky lighting.

He swallowed, took a step closer.

The wrists he touched tensed for an instant as he moved them apart, and he felt a precarious pair of eyes bore into him.

“Relax.”

He swept back a twist of fallen fringe, smelled remnants of mirelurk in the breath that wafted around him as his thumbs applied a gentle pressure on the sides of the other man’s head.

He’d done this many times before. Nora had softer, smoother hair. She’d shut her eyes and her lips breathed soft relief as his other fingers kneaded against the back of her neck and her scalp.

Even in the midst of his touches, Danse evidently had more self-control than her. “Why are you still here?” he whispered. “There’s no reason for you to stay.”

“That’s not true.”

Danse blinked languidly at him and held his forearms, halting any more movement.

Guilt had been a long-forgotten friend but now the vault dweller felt it wreathe into his chest like sun on ice. He shook his head, hands unwittingly slowing into caresses along a prickly neckline as he saw into the pair of darkened, rust-colored eyes.

It was half true. He could have left, could have walked out of the listening post and hung out with Deacon at the old church over beer, briefing and something that didn't involve having anything more to do with the Brotherhood of Steel.

But when all was said and done he couldn’t bring himself to leave the broken man alone.

Damn this.

It all pathetically, primitively came down to this.

He leaned in and gave the creased forehead a light kiss.

Which was strange. And awkward. Like something he’d do to a kid who’d fallen off her bike, only he genuinely thought it’d help right now. Somehow.

Danse responded with a slightly surprised, slightly wistful gaze glued somewhere to the ground.

“I'm sorry,” Nate said under his breath. “Sorry.” He kissed him once more, on that scarred brow.

The past. The future. He threw it all out when the other man dragged his eyes up to him and leaned in with a clumsy effort that brushed dry lips past his own.

Contact left as swift as it came, but they held their heads together, eyes shut, lips tingling, cold and silent as the bunker. There against the wall, the paladin smelled of a sour combination of sweat, mildew and oil – power armor and skin alike.

He tasted like liquor and seawater when they sank in for another kiss, fingers threaded through hair and tracing over dirt-stained cheekbones. Along his cold face Nate felt the paladin breathe in deep as his own chest stormed with a flare of emotions he would fight down.

When their lips unlocked they slid closer. Chest-to-chest, arms around one another tight like they held life itself, their eyes squeezed shut like they’d waited a century for this.

Maybe it was the cold. But Danse shivered underneath him with every breath and Nate ransacked his mind for the right thing to say to a man who had lost everything.

He had the urge to tell him he wasn’t going anywhere. That if he’d have him, he’d be around for a long time. Forever was a strong word and Paladin Danse wasn't one for empty promises.

The hands on his back slid down to rest along his belt and out of nowhere stirred a sudden, futile yearning for his late wife, for everything to be put back in its place. For the man in his embrace to feel alive once more.

They stayed together for minutes, till he felt a hesitant palm on his shoulder, gently prompting him to take a small step back.

Danse seemed like he made a bleak effort not to meet his eyes as he slipped away from him, rigid and listless.

“You should get some rest.”

Lumbering away, his back taut, the guy’s whisper still managed to sound like a command.


End file.
